Chairperson, the responsibility of these boards is to help provide water, and facilitate water provision in municipalities in the rural areas. What they do is that they purify water in some instances. They buy raw water and purify it, and sell it to the municipalities at a very low rate, with no profit intended at all.
They are also responsible for services in particular areas. They are even responsible for the installation of infrastructure and support, and sometimes manage the infrastructure that I am talking about on behalf of municipalities, whether it be the waste water treatment plant or the water treatment plant. So it is a range of functions that we have given them.
The overall objective is to ensure that we have an agency, at least a fully fledged organisation, that we can use to support the various municipalities in a particular area.
However, as we speak, there are two of our water boards that are not in such good shape, and those are unfortunately in the poorest of the poor areas. But we are revamping and reorganising ourselves. This afternoon we are announcing in our budget speech that we have new mechanisms for ensuring that we have wall-to-wall provision of services through the boards.
Each board is going to have a footprint in a province. For instance, the Eastern Cape will possibly be covered by one water board, which will allow it to benefit in regard to revenue generation and to be better placed to serve the communities. In some instances you find a water board serving people in a small locality, where 90% of the people are indigent, with no income or a low income, and that board cannot then plough money back. The two boards I am referring to are operating in such places. We believe that if we spread them across, they will then use money that is acquired from cities, towns and so on to augment their income. One thing that we are doing is looking at a programme where we will get a board like Rand Water to get a broader footprint in a larger place and cross-subsidise the poorest of the poor areas for services to be provided. I thank you.
Amounts owed by Eastern Cape municipalities for water supplied to them
44. Mr W F Faber (DA) asked the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs:
(1) Whether any municipalities in the Eastern Cape owe any outstanding amounts for water that is being supplied by (a) other municipalities and/or (b) any water service authorities; if not, what is the position in this regard; if so, (i) which municipalities, (ii) to which entities do they owe funds, (iii) what are the reasons for these outstanding accounts and (iv) for how long have these accounts been outstanding in each case;
(2) whether the institutions which are providing this water to municipalities are allowed to terminate the supply if the accounts are not paid; if not, what steps can be taken to recover the outstanding debt; if so, what is the relevant legislation that is applicable in this regard?