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Today, AfriForum once again spoke out about municipalities’ inability to manage themselves properly and believes that the time has long been ripe for the private sector to make their systems and processes available to municipalities to prevent further deterioration. This follows discussions this week during the session of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation, where shocking figures of municipalities’ consumer debt and the billions of rands needed to upgrade water treatment plants came to light.

During this session, Dr. Sean Phillips, director-general of Water and Sanitation, said that municipalities nationwide will have to spend R100 billion to upgrade water treatment plants – billions that municipalities do not have.

Velenkosini Hlabisa, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, also announced this week that government departments’ municipal debt nationwide amounts to R21 billion. He believes that municipalities should spend 10% of these collections on maintenance and repair work. According to AfriForum, this is a step in the right direction provided that municipalities can be trusted to manage their finances properly.

According to Marais de Vaal, AfriForum’s advisor for Environmental Affairs, municipalities are simply unable to manage themselves out of their current crisis. “Municipalities are supposed to manage their own finances, but years of corruption and misappropriation have resulted in municipalities no longer being able to manage their own finances. Civil organisations and the private sector must play an oversight role to ensure that funds are not misused and to make municipal processes more efficient.”

De Vaal believes that the funds for upgrading, maintenance and repair work should not be entrusted directly to municipalities as the risk is too great that these funds will disappear into the pockets of municipal officials. “Unfortunately, it is also the case that municipalities do not even have the right systems in place to collect outstanding debts, while grants are awarded to municipalities and then misused.”

“The latest information about the Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant, whose repair and upgrade is now expected to cost almost double than the R2 billion that was initially budgeted for, is the result of malpractice, corruption and delays. This reaffirms AfriForum’s position: the private sector’s systems must be implemented from the start to ensure efficiency.”

Issued by AfriForum