Water crisis can be solved if municipal budgets are managed correctly
The Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, mentioned in his budget speech yesterday that funding to municipalities and provinces will increase drastically in the medium term. The provincial government’s budget, which plays the oversight function over municipalities, will rise to R2 700 billion over the next three years. The financial injection from municipalities will rise to R521,7 billion over the same period.
“It doesn’t help that the treasury continues to throw money into a dark hole. The treasury has the obligation to enforce sound financial management and, together with the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, must properly intervene with municipalities. We also see that municipalities budget for bulk services projects, but that they are never carried out at ground level. Access to necessary funds is not always the problem, but sound management practices that are not implemented cause municipalities not to fulfil their constitutional duties,” says Lambert de Klerk, manager for Environmental Affairs at AfriForum.
“AfriForum has already seen that municipalities receive grants of millions of rands for three years, such as the MIG (Municipal Infrastructure Grant), and it is simply not used for infrastructure as planned in their budgets,” explains De Klerk.
As an example, one should look at the blue and green drop report that the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) released in 2022. The report shows an estimated cost for the green drop which looks specifically at the sewage system in South Africa. The “very rough order of measurement” (VROOM), an algorithm’s total cost to repair all the sewage plants and its systems, amounts to R8,14 billion.
It is clear that if municipalities manage the money correctly and if there is no corruption involved, the sewage crisis in the country can be solved. The blue drop audit will possibly be launched in the coming year which will also tell us what the estimated costs will be for drinking water systems in South Africa, which according to experts in certain provinces are in terrible conditions.
The following question must be asked: What happens in some municipalities with the money budgeted for infrastructure and maintenance?
According to Petrus Coetzee, AfriForum’s advisor for Local Government Affairs, municipalities report their poor financial and project management in their planning documentation (integrated development plan), yet the national treasury still funds this poor performance. “The public participation process of municipalities where the plan is being devised to tackle these gaps in service delivery is currently underway and communities must participate in these processes to ensure that their rights are protected.”
