Minister, although I have also asked the cost that it would take to clean up the river, you haven't answered on that. Minister, compliance monitoring in enforcement of polluters does not exist in your department. Raw and past retreated sewage is a major pollutant of the Vaal which creates serious health risks, Minister what are the drastic steps that you are going to take to enforce that the polluter must pay principle and withdraw licenses of municipalities guilty of polluting our rivers?
The MINISTER OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS, WATER AND SANITATION: Hon
Basson you know very well that what you're saying is not true. It does exist in our regulation. You, yourself congratulated us when we took one of the municipalities to court for polluting the river. So, you cannot now stand up and say it does not exist. It does exist.
In this particular case, it is not just a pollution, it is the breaking down of maintenance that has been in place over a long period of time and because we are serving more than one province and because we have outgrown the infrastructure that you put in, in 1902, we have grown by bounds since then because it did not occur to you that African people will be living near you, you did not make provision for the kind of people that live there right now. The infrastructure is unable to cope with what we have on the ground and I'll tell you what the cost is. You asked me what the cost is, the expenditure up to date has been R189 million.
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