Bua News (Tshwane)
March 27, 2007
Nozipho Dlamini
Pretoria
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, Lindiwe Hendricks, has commended the Elundini Local Municipality for successfully eradicating the bucket system in the established settlements earlier than the government's end of year target.
"Our confidence in achieving the goal of eradicating the bucket has been given a boost by the success of this municipality," she said.
Minister Hendricks was speaking at the handover of the Elundini Local Municipality Bucket Eradication Programme in the Eastern Cape, Tuesday.
The event forms part of the Sanitation and Hygiene Week observed from 26-30 March annually.
The theme of the campaign this year is "Sanitation for Health and Dignity".
Municipalities, Ms Hendricks said, such as Elundini had taken proactive measures in delivering services to the people and ensuring that the promise of a better life became a reality.
Other municipalities must follow the good example set here, particularly in the province where the sanitation backlog has been identified as one of the gravest in the country, she said.
The province has the third highest backlog in household sanitation in the country, with 450 000 households that still need access to adequate sanitation.
However, significant progress has been achieved in the province in the eradication of buckets, with the number of buckets drastically reduced from 48 000 in 2004 to about 9 000 at present.
An allocation of R148 million has been set aside this financial year to remove the remaining buckets.
Ms Hendricks said the affected municipalities had confirmed that this funding was sufficient to meet the targets.
To further support the Bucket Eradication programme, the province is planning to host a Bucket Eradication Summit in early May.
In the summit, it is expected that all the sector partners, especially municipalities, will have the opportunity to share experiences, lessons learned and to raise issues with Minister Hendricks and MEC for Housing and Local Government and Traditional Affairs, Sam Kwelita.
In addition, the minister said for many municipalities particularly in our rural areas there were challenges in their capacity to deliver sanitation services to the community.
These challenges are created partly because people with skills are attracted to the big cities and are reluctant to remain in rural areas, noted the minister.
However, to support these municipalities the department has mobilised engineers in a special sanitation programme called "Operation Gijima" to provide assistance and additional capacity, to these municipalities.
She said the programme aimed to accelerate the delivery of sanitation in rural areas, simultaneously building skills and creating jobs.
The operation is in line with the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) and its successful implementation will ensure that government reached its target to have provided proper sanitation to rural people by 2010.
Part of this support includes fast-tracking project registration and implementation.
"Our support is linked to Project Consolidate, which has been put in place by the Department of Provincial and Local Government to strengthen local government in order to deliver on its service delivery obligations," she said.
In terms of basic water supply, South Africa had already halved the backlog by 2005, thus achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) ten years ahead of the 2015 target date.
Delivering the State of the Nation Address in February, President Thabo Mbeki said access to electricity, water and sanitation had improved in the country.
He said by 2005, South Africa had already achieved the Millennium Development Goal in respect of basic water supply, with improvement of access from 59 percent in 1994 to 83 percent last year.
President Mbeki also noted that according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), South Africa was one of the few countries that spent more on water and sanitation than military budgets.
"We should indeed celebrate this great achievement. But it is a fact that eight million people are still without potable water. Many more are without electricity and sanitation," President Mbeki said.
However, he said, the government was proud that within one year, it had been able to reduce the backlog in the eradication of the bucket system in established settlements by almost half.
"We will continue to confront these challenges so as to erase in our country that which is ugly and repulsive so that together we can speak of freedom and the happiness that comes with liberty," he said.
The latest figures show that across the country about 117 000 buckets are still in existence in established settlements, with the most significant number of buckets that still need to be removed in the Free State.
