DEAR Editor,-
Last week’s letter from Phil Rowley concerning Ugu trying to enforce a ‘By-law enacted in 1998’ refers. To perhaps save expenditure and frustration by many, I would like to clarify the issue.
Last week on DStv, Ugu were put forward, by way of an example, where a local authority had pushed the limits if its own mandate beyond its own powers in enacting the by-law in a way that promotes collective bodies (such as a body corporate) in becoming Water Service Providers in order to alleviate its own shortfalls.
Fact. Ugu is the region’s ‘Water Services Authority (WSA)’. In terms of the Water Services Act 108 of 1997 and the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998 B) Section 11 (1) of the Water Services Act.
A WSA must adopt a Water Services Development Plan (WSDP) that becomes part of the Municipality’s Integrated Development Plan. This is a detailed description of how the WSA intends to implement and execute its mandate under the law.
This duty may be discharged by the district municipality itself, or it may approve the appointment of another entity to carry out that duty. Thus it may be its own Water Services Provider (WSP) or it can delegate that function to a public or private sector WSP.
Any entity approved by the Ugu District Municipality as a WSP will be expected to apply ‘the fundamental principle’ and, on an ongoing basis, satisfy the municipality that it is financially sustainable, a stipulation of ‘Ugu’s own fundamental principle’.
This is where Ugu have gone adrift – a ‘consumer’ is provided water by a ‘WSA’ through a ‘WSP’, and it is incomprehensible that a consumer and WSP can be both. Ugu has decreed that entities such as a ‘body corporate’ are not the consumers and appointed them each as a WSP.
Two issues here: Firstly, I doubt whether any such appointed WSP meets with the necessary provisions of government legislated requirements for being considered an appointed WSP, and secondly, all bodies corporate are, by legal definition, the collective owners of the property, that is, the consumers.
Conclusion: If Ugu threatens any consumer with fines for not providing for water storage, I would suggest telling them to cast their bucket elsewhere. It simply, ‘in televised legal opinion’, would not hold up in court.
MIKE LEE
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