DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga has called for an infrastructure master plan to address water challenges faced by residents in the province.
Msimanga said it is not enough for municipalities to come up with their own solutions for building and maintaining water infrastructure.
Instead, he suggested that provincial leadership should bring all municipalities together to discuss their challenges and find solutions.
He said Johannesburg needs an estimated R100-billion for its infrastructure, while Tshwane and Ekurhuleni each require at least R90-billion.
He said this shows that if large metropolitan municipalities struggle to secure funds for water infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, local municipalities will face even bigger challenges.
Msimanga also cited a report from the auditor-general, which shows that municipalities are not financially sustainable in the long term due to their reliance on daily water tankers.
Financial sustainability
“What we started seeing happening in KZN is now happening in Gauteng,” Msimanga said.
“There are tanker mafias in Gauteng, where some of these structures are deliberately being destroyed, deliberately sabotaged, so that there can be reliance on the tankers.
“Therefore, municipalities are not going to be able to sustain themselves because what ends up happening is that money that is supposed to be going into building and sustaining the infrastructure is now being withdrawn and taken to the provision of water through tankers.”
To end this behaviour, Msimanga said the provincial government should come up with the infrastructure master plan, pull resources at a local level, and come up with an infrastructure grant at a provincial level.
He explained that this grant would be accessible to those ready to build and maintain infrastructure and ensure that people would be billed correctly, which would mean that money would be rightfully collected.
He added that municipalities will continue to dip into other budgets to maintain the utility and predicts that this will not change unless the plan is implemented.
