Pretoria - The City of Tshwane is among municipalities that owe entities such as Rand Water R16 billion as of December.
Although Tshwane has entered into a payment arrangement that saw them service a debt that was sitting above R600 million at the beginning of this month, non-payment makes it hard for water boards to collect revenue.
This is according to Parliament’s portfolio committee on water and sanitation, that acknowledged municipalities were struggling to keep up with payments due to non-payment from mostly residents and businesses.
The R16.1bn debt was calculated in December, prompting the committee to highlight that water boards like Amatola, Bloemfontein, Lepelle, Mhlathuze, and Rand Water were performing below the 80% of planned targets, which also directly impacted their ability to deliver services.
Chairperson of the committee, Robert Mashego, said it was necessary for the water boards to reconfigure to ensure efficiencies and ensure the achievement of targets that would ensure the delivery of water to people.
The committee has called for improvement of relationships with municipalities to promote the payment of services, essentially because the financial sustainability of these water boards remained critical to their existence. Their poor financial position arose from poor payments by their clients that negatively impacted their ability to raise funds for capital projects.
The committee also rejected the excuse that some of the water boards were underperforming because of the shortage of chlorine gas, an “old excuse” that was raised to the committee previously.
They urged the Department of Water and Sanitation to work with the Department of Trade and Industry and Competition to resolve the problem of the shortage of chlorine, especially because of the importance of chlorine in ensuring quality of water.
Mashego said they had called for close collaboration between the water boards and municipalities to improve the operations of the municipalities’ waste-water treatment plants to ensure improved quality of discharged water.
They said the poor water quality had been raised by many water boards and they had highlighted the need for urgent improvement as this affected the value chain. They also called for investment in bulk-water infrastructure to reduce water losses.
Regarding governance, the committee remained concerned by the poor audit outcomes of Amatola, Mhlathuze that achieved unqualified audit opinions.
The committee called on the department to ensure governance structures were in place in all water boards and senior managers are appointed.
Although he acknowledged there had been good progress, he said the committee remained concerned there were still challenges that denied people access to water.
“We are hopeful that the reconfiguration will assist in better economies of scale for water boards, enable better cross subsidisation and increased financial sustainability as well as enhance market capitalisation for infrastructure projects.
“But we must caution against cosmetic changes that don’t bring about tangible results and access to water for the people,” Mashego said.
Pretoria News