Chairperson, the question from hon Worth was about the department's capacity to assist municipalities which are experiencing difficulties in maintaining waste water treatment plants. Yes, indeed, our department is assisting municipalities. We believe that even though we don't have adequate capacity, we are doing our level best to assist municipalities.
We are not only using in-house capacity; we have established what we call the rapid response teams. This afternoon we shall be announcing the establishment of the nine rapid response teams in all the provinces - we used to have only one - so that we do the necessary interventions where they are needed at any given time.
This kind of team has been in existence in Mpumalanga, the Free State and the North West. We have piloted the teams there, and it has particularly helped in the Free State. They are an illustration of the kind of exercise that came up in Ficksburg, which I was talking about earlier on.
Through the legal process of the Green Drop certification programme we provide the municipality staff, at both operational and management level, with sufficient information to ensure effective risk-based management of waste water treatment systems. This is done through a process of consultative auditing, where inspectors verify programme levels but also provide guidance where shortcomings are identified. This Green Drop programme deals with waste water treatment plants.
There is another programme called the Blue Drop programme, which is for drinking water. We go through the same exercise that we use - a voluntary, legal exercise. This is a programme that is intended to ensure that we have good quality water and that municipalities are assisted. We have seen a submission from all municipalities for this programme to be audited and inspected, and we have recently issued certificates for the Green Drop and the Blue Drop programmes in support of these programmes.
We also have the Accelerated Community Infrastructure Programme I referred to earlier on, which provided assistance to the value of R221 million in the last financial year. This was further augmented by the regional bulk infrastructure grant, which provided assistance to the value of R113 million last year.
This afternoon we will be announcing additional money, which I referred to earlier on, to support municipalities. To illustrate this, we spent over R200 million in just three or four municipalities in the Free State, because we saw that they were problematic municipalities with lots of problems in this regard. Matjhabeng Local Municipality is one of those that we helped to refurbish their infrastructure last year.
In addition to this, we actually supply and support municipalities with the necessary teams of interns, whom I spoke about earlier on and who attend training at our Roodeplaat Training Centre. That is the learning academy for Water Affairs staff. We actually get them deployed. As I speak, there are over 50 of them who have been deployed countrywide. There are still about 300 in training, and in services where they are being trained to be qualified artisans and water specialists. They are being trained in order to be redeployed to the municipalities as part of addressing a shortage of these skills. So there is the money aspect, there is the technical aspect, and there is also the skills-related support that we are giving. Thank you very much.