No excuse for SA’s dry taps

It’s enough to make you cry when you hear that R10 billion a year has been spent by the department of water and sanitation on water infrastructure services since 2019, yet 3.1 million of South Africa’s near 19 million households are still dry.

That’s roughly one in six households without running water.

More concerning is that the department, in a written parliamentary response to a question posed by Build One South Africa parliamentarian Nobunto Hlazo-Webster this week, revealed it still needs almost R90 billion over the next 10 years to meet the water needs of South Africans.

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And before everyone assumes it’s a rural area problem alone, 1.9 million households without water were in the periurban – areas with intermediate land use on the periphery of urban areas, including informal settlements, to add to the million households in rural areas.

Lack of development and maintenance, the high demand for water, climate change and not enough investment – although many will argue R10 billion a year is a huge outlay from taxpayers – are just a few of the reasons why we find ourselves in this predicament.

Having no running water or experiencing water shortages is nothing new to South Africans.

But we really shouldn’t have to deal with these issues daily.

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