Licences won’t fix dirty water
- Tracy-Lynn Field
South Africa’s government has a new plan to license water providers and revoke the licences if they don’t deliver clean, drinkable water.
In many cities and towns across South Africa, water shortages and supply disruptions have become more frequent. Most recent figures show that 33% of all urban water users and 65% of rural users face regular water cut-offs. Nearly half of urban residents now boil or treat their water before drinking it.
South Africa’s water law says everyone has the right to access sufficient water. But 12% of rural people have no access to improved water sources.
The most recent Blue Drop report into the state of South Africa’s water supply systems revealed that 46% were unable to guarantee that their water was safe to drink. The people relying on these systems were exposed to the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery.
The Green Drop report, which evaluates the state of South Africa’s wastewater treatment works, showed that many of these plants were in a critical condition. Nearly two-thirds were at risk of spewing sewage back into the environment and into the rivers that supply people with water.
The No Drop report assesses the state of water that local government can’t charge for. It found that on average, 47% of all clean water was lost through leaking pipes, faulty metering, weak billing and illegal connections.
To solve these problems, the government wants to amend the Water Services Act. Water services providers – the legal entities responsible for treating and distributing water, managing the staff and equipment of water systems, and collecting payment for water – will need to apply for licences from the national Department of Water and Sanitation. The national government will be able to revoke these if the providers don’t deliver clean, drinkable water.
Municipalities can already choose to appoint external water services providers, but currently most undertake this function themselves. At present, the process of a higher level of government taking over a dysfunctional local provider is long and complicated. Under the new law, the national government will be able to revoke a water services licence, forcing the municipality to appoint another provider, which could include private companies or non-profit organisations.
This will give national government more power to make sure that water services providers are delivering water that’s safe enough to drink. However, the intervention will not be a quick fix.
I am the principal investigator for the South African Water Justice Tracker, a three-year project co-hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand and the South African Human Rights Commission. This project aims to find out what prevents local government from providing