Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu says pending a decision from Cabinet, the department will invoke a clause of the Water Services Act in order to intervene and resolve the pollution of the Vaal River system.<\/p>\n
Sisulu said this when she tabled the Water and Sanitation budget vote to a mini plenary of the National Assembly on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Minister and the department have spent a great deal of time attempting to solve the problem. The Vaal community has also been of help, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut by 17 February 2021 the Human Rights Commission had issued a report on its own investigation and instructed ourselves to intervene in a decisive manner and take overall responsibility to restore the rights and dignity of the people of Emfuleni.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have since been in discussions and received the concurrence of the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), the Premier of Gauteng, and the support of the Deputy President to intervene in terms of section 63(2) of the Water Services Act, 1997. We are, all three spheres of government, in agreement that this should be done and we have already put in place steps to implement this, pending [a] Cabinet agreement,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Vaal River system spans three provinces and two countries.<\/p>\n
She said the Vaal crisis can be grouped into three main areas – infrastructure, governance and institutional capacity and finance.<\/p>\n
The problem will not be solved with infrastructure capacity only.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are additional factors, such as other provinces contributing to the crisis, resulting in the continued state of pollution of the Vaal River. Because of its geographic position and flat topography, the Vaal has become a collection point from various sewer points and putting excessive strain on operation and maintenance of pumps at stations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeally sewer treatment is a municipal service that requires costs recovery as a minimum. However, the high unemployment and dwindling revenue collection in the Vaal area is making it difficult for the Emfuleni municipality to recover any costs or generate an income to cover operation and maintenance, let alone expansion of the treatment plants,\u201d said the Minister.<\/p>\n
Refurbishing waste water systems<\/strong><\/p>\n Sisulu said the responsibility of the Emfuleni municipality as a water service authority will be taken over by national government. Rand Water has been appointed as the implementing agent to take full responsibility of operations and maintenance of the municipality\u2019s water and sanitation infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cCoupled with this is the refurbishment of the waste water systems. The necessary resources have been secured and to this end an amount of R1.1 billion [over the next three years] has been set aside for refurbishment of the waste water treatment plants.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition a further amount of R700 million over the [next three years] has been set aside to add more capacity on the sewer network. This is a matter that we have been dealing with together with the community of the Vaal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has taken up a great deal of our time and we are glad we are at this point.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the coming weeks, the department would have finalised the appointment of contractors for them to immediately be on the ground to urgently address the dire situation. We have already started putting out requests and advertising for engineers \u2013 only South African engineers,\u201d she said. \u2013 SAnews.gov.za<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu says pending a decision from Cabinet, the department will invoke a clause of the Water Services Act in order to intervene and resolve the pollution of the Vaal River system. Sisulu said this when she tabled the Water and Sanitation budget vote to a mini plenary of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38678],"class_list":{"0":"post-190097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-sanews","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}