Minister of Water and Sanitation Senzo Mchunu says the steering committee that he is co-chairing together with the North West Premier Bushy Maape has found out that the province is not faced with water scarcity but more of water services management that is taking water from the bulk to household and other businesses.
Mchunu said this last Saturday in Klerksdorp in the City of Matlosana Local Municipality, where he was part of the ANC National Working Committee that paid a visit in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District.
He said they found out that water services management needs to attend to many issues in the province. "We decided to coordinate at the Provincial Level instead of Municipalities as we do elsewhere,” he said.
Mchunu also said the Committee has now developed plans meant to provide Water and Sanitation to residents of the North West Province, as large parts of the province are without water, and the team has made massive progress in finding solutions to water challenges in the province. “Where we are now is by mid-July, we’ll start implementing all the outcomes of our work that we have been doing in the North West province since we’ve set up the steering committee. This work takes the form of each Municipality identifying their priority on water, and then after we have agreed on that priority, we can start to source funding for that priority and also decide on the delivery model,” he stated.
Minister Mchunu further said there is a three-kilometre pipe that Premier Maape is complaining about in Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality that is also a challenge. However, they have to be in a hurry to implement and connect all the pipes where in some instances, they will use their internal construction unit, they will have to use the board and also use the municipalities to overcome challenges of Water and Sanitation in the province. “We are going to have projects all over North West, prioritized by each Municipality at the Technical Committee that we have agreed, and we are sourcing funds because there’s no budget that was ready for North West in our department ordinarily in terms of interventions. The ready budget is in terms of their grants because they go to every Municipality every year, but they don't use them properly,” he said.
Mchunu said there are enormous grievances made by people complaining about lack of water and poor infrastructure in sanitation within their communities. “We are getting closer now to these things so that we can deliver water, people are not lying when they complain about water and sanitation all over, and they go to the streets. It means there is a problem, and we are taking that very seriously, and that's why we are in a hurry because we have been denying people their constitutional right, and water is life,” he said.
Minister Mchunu said these are reasons he became the Co-Chair of the Steering Committee instead of sending someone else so that they can do things on their own at a close range until they can cover everybody in the province.
