Daily water outages 'the norm', says Steenhuisen
DA leader John Steenhuisen on Friday lamented what the party believes to be a lack of intervention in the country’s water crisis.
The party briefed the media on the escalating crisis of clean water supply across South Africa.
Steenhuisen claimed that poor infrastructure maintenance, corruption, and municipal collapse have compromised the reliability of supply in hundreds of towns across the country.
“Daily outages are becoming a norm in many communities in our country,” he said.
“Some of these communities have been without water for months despite having the necessary infrastructure.”
Steenhuisen said 36% of homes experience water outages lasting longer than two days, while the number in the Western Cape is only 3%.
“Local government councillors face daily pressure from communities to resolve water-related issues, and in most cases, the solution is out of their control because senior leadership that is supposed to ensure proper water infrastructure maintenance have checked out and are absent.” Steenhuisen explained.
Steenhuisen, who is also Minister of Agriculture, said the national government can only solve the water crisis with the help of local government.
Municipal water debts currently total some R22 billion nationally.
“No matter how much planning is done on a national level, if the local government cannot put their act together, if local municipalities cannot keep their infrastructure maintained, and reticulation services maintained, then nothing that national government does or says can be implemented at a local level,” Steenhuisen said.
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