Address by
Honourable Premier TSP Makwetla at the Launch of the Water for
All Flagship
KwaMhlushwa
Stadium, Nkomazi Municipality
12 March 2009
Programme Director
MEC for Local Government and Housing and Chairperson of the Governance and Administration Cluster, MEC Mashego-Dlamini
Members of the Executive Council
Executive Mayors of
Chairperson of the Provincial House of Traditional Leaders, Inkosi SE Mahlangu
Councillors
The Acting Director-General, Mr Mighty Mgidi, and Senior Managers in the Public Service
Our Government’s Social Partners
The people of Nkomazi and
Ladies and gentlemen
On this important occasion marking the official launch of the
Water for All flagship, we are buoyed by progress that the
Province has already made in assisting households to have access
to clean water. Access to clean and safe water is a fundamental
human right that communities are entitled to.
Many of you will recall that as part of the "Big Five" flagship
programmes announced in our 2007 State of the Province Address,
the "Water for All" flagship was prioritised
to ensure that communities have
access to water services infrastructure and clean water by 2010.
As
a Province, we are cognisant of the fact that access to clean
and safe water is vital for human development and poverty
eradication. Lack of access to clean water is one of the major
causes of water-borne diseases which cost human lives. Our focus
on the provision of clean water and improved sanitation is
intended to mitigate negative health impacts and improve the
health profile of communities.
Colleagues, the launch of our flagship project to roll-out water
infrastructure today, comes against the back-drop of the
emergency health crisis we experienced recently with the
outbreak of cholera in our province and elsewhere as a result of
the contamination of our water sources.
In the province, 387 people have been confirmed through
laboratory tests as cholera cases.
To date, 30 people have lost their lives – 22 in
Bushbuckridge municipality, 9 in Mbombela and 1 in Thaba Chweu.
If we are to prevent the spread of deadly diseases such as
cholera, it is critical that our water purification
infrastructure is effective to enhance water quality. It is also
essential that sewerage plants and related infrastructure are
upgraded to prevent possible contamination of water sources.
Programme Director, in our interaction with beneficiaries of
some of the water projects we visited this morning, we were
encouraged that the Province is making satisfactory progress
towards ensuring that we address water service backlogs to
improve the quality of life of citizens. For many citizens, life
has changed for the better. Many
of those who used to walk long distances to fetch water from
natural sources now have access to clean tap water.
In all our
municipalities, we conducted assessments of water service
backlogs and identified specific interventions to address
problems related to lack of access to adequate and clean water.
Throughout the Province, we have made significant strides in
addressing water services backlogs. The emerging picture is
positive. As
highlighted in the State of the Province Address this year, of
945,394 households, 72.7% have access to water at RDP level and
above. The backlog of the number of households with inadequate
access to water has been reduced to 257, 912, constituting 27.3%
of the households in the Province. Of this amount, 3.5%
households have no access to infrastructure at all.
Our immediate priority
is assisting these households who have no access to
infrastructure at all.
Many of the households with no infrastructure at all reside in
Nkomazi. It is critical
that in Nkomazi we work hard to eradicate water service backlogs
in 37,553 households. Our assessment of the operational status
of water supply schemes in Nkomazi pointed to infrastructure
operation and maintenance challenges as well as the dire need to
extend water reticulation to areas with no access to safe and
clean water.
As part of the implementation of the Water for All flagship, the
Executive Council approved an initial allocation of R87 million
towards the Nkomazi Water Intervention Plan aimed at addressing
clean water supply challenges to impoverished and deprived areas
of Nkomazi. Through the
Water for All
programme, we want to ensure that we provide bulk water supply
and reticulation infrastructure to enable households who have no
infrastructure at all to access clean water.
We will also focus on the refurbishment and upgrading of
dilapidated reticulation and water treatment infrastructure to
ensure that we improve access to clean water.
It is a cause for
optimism that as we officially launch the
Water for All
flagship today, water projects are under way in many areas of
Nkomazi.
Programme Director, one of the critical success factors in
ensuring sustainable water service delivery to communities is
the existence of requisite institutional capacity to effectively
manage, operate and maintain bulk water supply and reticulation
infrastructure. Part of the Nkomazi Water Intervention Plan aims
to strengthen the capacity of the
As communities, we have a responsibility to save water and
jealously guard, as our own, the infrastructure that government
has provided to improve our quality of life. Illegal connections
and destruction of infrastructure will take us backwards and
contribute to poor access to clean and safe water. As owners of
the infrastructure, we must cherish and protect our community
assets from vandalism and abuse.
If there are issues to be resolved, we must communicate
with councillors to ensure that challenges communities
experience are resolved as speedily as possible.
In this regard, I am tempted to believe that for this
infrastructure to serve us optimally in a sustainable manner, we
need our own community-based supervisory and control structures
to look after these services.
This possibility, our municipality and councillors may
want to explore, and by so doing, advance the maxim that
community organisation is a requisite for community development.
Programme Director, I want to conclude by saying that as
government we are committed to improving access to sufficient
and clean water so that we avoid the negative impact engendered
by lack of access to clean water on the health of communities.
In addition to this, we
must mobilise partnerships to raise awareness about the
importance of keeping our environment clean to avoid
contamination of our water sources.
The battle to realise a better life for all citizens and
communities in our province must be won.
In this work, nothing is as vital as collective concentration
and single-mindedness on our duties, both as a province and all
our municipalities.
I thank you.