Umgeni Water needs R200bn to tackle service backlog
About 16% of KwaZulu-Natal’s 11-million residents did not have access to piped water by 2015
Umgeni Water, the water board serving KwaZulu-Natal — the country’s most populous province — says it needs at least R200bn to address a service backlog, almost double the country’s total budget for water and sanitation for the three years to the end of 2019. "The real headache is where the funds are going to come from," Umgeni Water spokesperson Shami Harichunder, said last week Thursday. The board serves metropolitan areas including Durban. The figure comes from a study on water security by 11 municipal authorities in the province and another two in the neighbouring Eastern Cape, which showed that R121bn was needed to build bulk water infrastructure including dams, water-purification plants and pipelines, and a further R100bn for reticulation, Harichunder said. The report did not probe how to recover the revenue from consumers, he said. Faced with rising debt and slowing tax revenue, the Treasury is trying to reduce municipalities and state-owned companies’ reliance on government g...
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