LIMPOPO – THE deputy minister for water and sanitation, Pamela Tshwete, said the reason South Africa had water problems in rural areas was because water was not meant to go to villages during the Apartheid regime.
“The former government designed the water to go to the locations. So if you lived in a village, your source of water was the nearest river,” she said last Wednesday during the launch of Adopt-a-River programme at Magomani village outside Malamulele.
According to Tshwete, it was only after democracy that government began to instal pipelines and boreholes in villages.
“As a democratic government, we want all our people to have access to water, this is why we’re busy connecting pipelines or drilling boreholes in the areas that have no access to water,” she said.
Ronnie Magona, who spoke on behalf of the chieftancy, appealed to the deputy minister to give stipends to the 1 450 volunteers who were part of the Adopt-a-River programme around the Malamulele area.
Magona said the women had families that they looked after, and therefore, they needed some form of motivation in order to keep them going.
“These volunteers have families that look up to them,” he said.
In response, the deputy minister said she would ensure all the volunteers received stipends for their work.
“Adopt-a-River is a programme I started, therefore I will ensure all the volunteers get their stipends so that they would be able to support their families as intended by this programme,” explained the deputy minister.
She said the Adopt-a-River programme not only aimed to keep the country’s rivers clean, but to help rural women get jobs to help them feed their families.
