Residents are paying the price as 59 municipalities spent billions on emergency water tankers, failing to maintain crumbling infrastructure.
The auditor-general of South Africa (AG) has revealed that 59 municipalities spent R2.32 billion on water tankering during the 2023\24 financial year.
Of this, R419 million was spent irregularly.
Jolene Pillay, senior manager at the AG, briefed the parliamentary portfolio committee on water and sanitation on its Water Sector Report on Tuesday.
She painted a bleak picture of irregular spending by municipalities, lack of infrastructure maintenance and municipal plans to provide services to residents.
Councils do not hold accounting officers accountable for these failures.
Water services development plans
The Water Services Act requires municipalities to prepare and regularly update their water service development plans and submit them to the minister.
These plans ensure the effective provision of water and sanitation services to residents.
However, according to the AG, more than 33% of the audited municipalities (25) did not have these plans, while six had not updated theirs in the last five years.
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Some of these municipalities did not provide evidence to confirm the existence or updates of plans, mostly in the Free State and Northern Cape.
Of the 63 municipalities with updated plans, six did not report to the department of water and sanitation on implementation of their plans for the 2021/22 and 2022/23 financial years.
“When municipalities do not prepare or update their water service development plans, there is no structured approach to enable proper functioning and this increases the risk of not fulfilling their service delivery obligations to residents,” said Pillay.
Sol Plaatje Local Municipality
The AG singled out the Sol Plaatje municipality in the Northern Cape, which is struggling to deliver services.
According to the AG, the municipality does not have a water service development plan, operations and maintenance plan or an environmental protection plan.
Consequently, the municipality did not determine its backlog in water services, did not conduct water infrastructure condition assessments to inform maintenance activities and could not properly plan for the maintenance of existing infrastructure.
“The lack of maintenance at the municipality contributed to high water losses, which were recorded at 66% in the 2023/24 financial year,” said Pillay.
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“It resulted in the disruption of supply and it had to use water tanking services to provide access to basic water in some communities – R1.6 million was spent on these services in the year under review.
“The lack of appropriate measures to maintain the wastewater treatment works has also resulted in untreated water being discharged into the surrounding water sources and this has caused harm to the health of users who aredependent on these water sources.
“As part of the audit process for the Sol Plaatje municipality, we have issued a material irregularity to the accounting officer and we have noted that the accounting officer has since taken action to address the environmental issues, including the repair and maintenance of the wastewater treatment works.”
Infrastructure maintenance
These municipalities have failed to maintain the infrastructure in their care.
According to the AG, inadequate maintenance led to high water losses in the 2023/24 financial year.
Municipalities reported water losses of R14.89 billion in their financial statements.
“There is poor drinking water quality, where the DWS identified non-compliance across various municipalities.
“There is a lack of institutional capability – the DWS assessed municipalities’ shortfall of 400 staff at water treatment works, either vacant or without required qualifications – 60% of wastewater treatment works have poor technical skills.”
The AG called on councils to hold municipal managers accountable.
“There is poor coordination amongst the water sector roleplayers and a lack of monitoring and enforcement of consequences by the DWS and the members of the executive council for local government,” said Pillay.
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