BASIC SERVICES
State must employ technical experts to tackle crisis in rural water supply
Funds have been allocated to tackle the problem but municipalities lack the right people for the job, writes Ian Palmer
Last year was a bad one for the water sector. The suffering of farmers was well publicised and urban dwellers spoke endlessly on talk radio shows of how they struggled with water restrictions and wilting gardens. But where was the voice of rural people, many of whom get no water at all? It is not that we don’t know how serious the situation is. Using the 2011 census, the Department of Water and Sanitation showed that in Limpopo, for example, of the 60% of households that have been provided with water schemes, only 3% get water with no interruptions — 80% have interruptions of longer than two days at a time. Responding to the 2016 community survey carried out by Statistics SA, about 44% of households in Limpopo indicated that they lacked a safe and reliable water supply. This was far higher than all their other service provision concerns. The situation was not much better in the Eastern Cape and other more rural provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and North West. What is the ...
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