Firstly, may I take this opportunity to educate the hon member a bit. The Department of Water and Environmental Affairs at the national level has, legally and otherwise, full powers to work on what we call water resources - dams, bulk infrastructure and all such matters - while reticulation is actually a function of municipalities. There is a separate Act in that regard, and it is called the Water Services Act. In that regard there are water services authorities who deal with reticulation, taking water from the resources to the communities in townships and so on. These are two separate functions.
It is not possible for me, this afternoon, to stand in front of you and perhaps tell a lie and say that this is the time, the date and month, when we will come back with the reticulation process in order particularly to ensure that we stop those toyi-toying.
However, we have not taken a back seat, irrespective of the fact that we are not municipalities. We have taken a decision in the department that Rome cannot burn while we are saying that this is somebody else's function! We have taken it upon ourselves to say that we will intervene, and we will support and work with municipalities.
These measures that I have been talking about now are partly to address those issues. We are taking funds from the MIG, restructuring, and working with Cogta at the national level to deliberately intervene where the challenges are. This is because we have seen that, if we sit back, there are instances where some of the municipalities do not address those issues. We cannot sit back forever; we believe that we have to intervene.
The measures that I am announcing are in the amount of about R550 million this year, and it is not possible to intervene in all the areas in this particular year. One area that we are intervening in is the refurbishment of our infrastructure. Our reticulation infrastructure in the reticulated areas is very old and there are some leakages. In some instances water is not reaching the people because of the leakages, and this, of course, is due to the shabby nature of our infrastructure. Indeed, it is a very complex, difficult and challenging area, but it is not insurmountable. We are addressing the matter - we started immediately. Once again, it is not possible for me to say that we will complete it by next year or on a specific date. Thank you.