Minister to address water challenges in Giyani

The Minister of Water and Sanitation, Gugile Nkwinti, has announced a bold plan to address the water challenges faced by the residents of 38 villages in Giyani.

In his maiden Budget Vote speech in Parliament last week, Nkwiti said his department would prioritise the Nandoni pipeline and a reservoir in order to increase water sourcing in Giyani.

He said a new bulk line will be connected into the existing village distribution reservoirs and household connections.

Furthermore, the department will start to fundraise for the 50 distribution reservoirs and household reticulations.

The plan also include: Minimum approach to household reticulations in all villages in order to prevent further vandalism of the bulk lines (new and old).

*Safety of boreholes and package plants is important and must be budgeted.

Also Read: GIYANI: Water project initially valued at R502m, balloons to R2.7bn

*Well-coordinated multi-stakeholder (private, public and community) involvement in fundraising for the last phases of the project.

*Increased involvement of local people in subcontracting and employments.

*The 38 villages which are excluded from the intervention should also be considered.

Minister Nkwinti added that his department had developed a five-pillar turn-around strategy to address issues of service delivery.

He said of the R15,5 billion that has been budgeted for 2018/19, R5 billion will be transferred directly to municipalities under schedule 5B of the Division of Revenue Act (DORA) for use in the Water Service Infrastructure Grant as well as well as Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant.

“This allocation is meant for fully functional Municipalities who can run on their own with the least degree of oversight from the Department. These funds are locked and cannot be used towards anything else except transfers to the municipalities.”

Minister Nkwinti said, were current budgetary challenges that emanated from previous financial years.

The preliminary commitments for which contracts had been signed and service providers were currently rendering services amounted to R7.5billion, R6.3billion of which is for the department’s infrastructure projects and R1.1billion was for operational goods and services.

Of this figure, R2 billion was expected to be paid to the service providers in the current financial year.

“We have also noted with concern that in certain instances, contracts without a value have been entered into, and these pose difficulty in accurately budgeting for them, which leaves the Department vulnerable.

Our bucket eradication program falls into this category, and this has historically caused unauthorised expenditure caused by overspending in the bucket eradication program.

R292million overspendingd in the Sanitation program in 2016/17, and additional overspending will be reported for the 2017/18 financial year.

“Poor project management within the Department has created a situation whereby service providers are accelerating the work at a much faster pace than what the Department had budgeted for.

A typical example is our project in Giyani which was initially planned to be completed over five years; and, was budgeted for accordingly.

However, the work was accelerated and completed within a two and half year period.

There is poor alignment between the budget and the project milestones; and, in certain instances, the project milestones are much ahead of the budget,” Minister Nkwinti said.

He said there were crucial projects like the War on Leaks which had not been budgeted for by the Department.

Urgent intervention was required in the department’s project management as well as contract management to ensure that the project planning was aligned with the available budget and to prevent our projects from being ahead of the available budget.