Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation has called for complete structural reform within the local government sector to ensure improved water and sanitation services provision.

While an alignment of interventions in struggling water services authorities (WSAs) by the departments of Water and Sanitation (DWS), Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) and the South African Local Government Association is welcome, these efforts will prove futile without a complete structural overhaul of municipalities facing serious governance and administrative challenges.

The DWS and Cogta are implementing various support initiatives, including converting direct grants to indirect grants to allow national departments or implementing agents to manage funds in failing municipalities, thereby improving spending and delivery of projects by enlisting the services of the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency to improve project implementation.

“However, there remain deep-rooted issues that need resolution,” says Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation chairperson Leon Basson, highlighting significant infrastructure backlogs, and the challenge of governance and lack of skills within municipalities to implement infrastructure projects within budget and scope.

The DWS estimates a significant water and sanitation infrastructure backlog of about R400-billio in the 105 underperforming municipalities identified in the Blue and Green Drop reports.

According to these reports, 105 WSAs, or 73% of the 144 WSAs, scored critical (68) or poor (38) on average across their water supply systems and/or wastewater systems, making up the list of 105 worst performing municipalities.

In a presentation to the Portfolio Committee in September, DWS water and sanitation services management deputy director-general Dr Risimati Mathye explained that, in the last financial year, the DWS, CoGTA and the Department of Human Settlements (DHS) collectively spent over R24-billion on municipal water and sanitation infrastructure projects.

Over the past five years, the DWS has transferred about R30-billion in the form of infrastructure grants to these 105 municipalities, while R10-billion has been earmarked for these identified municipalities for each of the next two financial years, accounting for 80% of the DWS grant allocations to municipalities.

In the past five years, Cogta transferred about R43-billion in grants to these 105 municipalities, while the DHS provides grant support to metropolitan municipalities through the Urban Settlement Development Grant. In the past financial year, over R3-billion was allocated to water and sanitation projects.

“The lack of planning and consequences within municipalities is also a point of serious concern for the committee. What the Blue and Green Drop reports have highlighted is the lack of planning at the municipal level and subsequent consequence management in implementing corrective measurement plans in response to the reports,” Basson comments.

“The reality is that South African municipalities are not well capacitated to manage and implement water and sanitation infrastructure projects.”

To mitigate these challenges, the DWS is providing support to struggling municipalities for them to perform their functions, including technical assistance, financial aid, such as grants, and monitoring of compliance.

As part of interventions already being implemented, Cogta informed the committee that it tries to appoint capable, knowledgeable, skilled and experienced multidisciplinary implementing agents to assist municipalities with arranging alternative infrastructure financing and the implementation of infrastructure and construction projects, including unblocking projects stalled for various reasons over time.

Municipalities will also be assisted with financing solutions, planning, engineering designs, construction and project management. In some cases, the build-operate-transfer principle will be adopted.

The DWS has also established the Water Partnerships Office, which is intended to facilitate partnerships between the public and private sectors, with a focus on project preparation, finance and implementation support.

The Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation, however, raised concerns that the tangible impact of the support provided to struggling municipalities is negligible.

“It is concerning that 105 municipalities out of 144 WSAs, amounting to 73% of all WSAs, are underperforming in the delivery of their mandates. This has a direct socioeconomic impact and undermines the drive for inclusive economic growth and improving access to quality water,” Basson emphasises.

“While the alignment of efforts and standards is critical to effectively drive implementation, solutions should be systematic and overarching.”

The committee remains of the view that interventions remain piecemeal and do not address the root causes of the challenges faced by WSAs.

“The continued channelling of resources without a complete systematic overhaul and strengthening of municipalities to deliver services will be futile,” he continues, adding that the full and comprehensive implementation of all recommendations might have the necessary ripple effect to resolve challenges within the system.

The committee has also called for the sharing of good practices between municipalities and avoiding a silo mentality, guided by the desire to ensure quality service delivery.