Government for the people: Access to Water

Basic Services that each Government must deliver upon

South Africa’s Constitution is among a few in the world which defines access to basic: housing; education; water and electricity as Human Rights. As such, the government of South Africa under the leadership of the ANC, is constitutionally compelled to provide for these services to all citizens. A lot of progress has been made with regards to the delivery of these services since the first democratic elections of 1994. However challenges still remain.

Access to Water

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in excess of 1.1 billion people around the world do not have access to proper water supply services. More alarming is that more than 2.5 billion people globally do not have access to proper sanitation services. This means this section of the world population is constantly exposed to diseases and infections. Sadly, many of those with limited access to proper water and sanitation happen to live in Africa.

According to the latest information available in the General Household Survey carried out by Stats SA, 92.9% of South African households had access to safe water in 2010. This had improved from 88.7% in 2002. The survey further reveals that "general access to piped water on site rose steadily, from 27.5% in 2002 to 29.1% in 2010." While access to water has improved, many South Africans still have to travel a fair amount of distance to gain access to piped water. The challenge in South Africa remains daunting and government is not alone in tackling the problem.

In 2008 Irish Aid, an agency of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Ireland, donated €4.3 million towards projects aimed at improving water and sanitation services in certain rural areas in SA. Many other such agencies and NGO’s are involved with projects aimed at alleviating the water problem in SA.

The real problem seems to be effective delivery by government rather than funding. Another is the continuing growth in the number of households living in informal settlements without proper access to water and sanitation services. A further and perhaps more alarming problem is desertification and lower rain fall in certain parts of the country.

The Ideas: Solutions 

South Africa must Go Green when it comes to water issues, other developing countries are certainly going this route to address their water and sanitation challenges. The SA Government therefore ought to invest in technologies which:

a) seek to collect and capture rain water either for irrigation or sanitation purposes and

b) seek to convert human waste to energy in an effort to reduce dependence on electricity from the grid. Both these solution could be applied more effectively in schools, rural households and the informal settlements.

In addition, I truly believe that speeding up the delivery of basic housing to the poor and eradicating informal settlements, would go a long way towards improving access to proper water and sanitation services. This is assuming that each basic house built by our government comes with access to piped water and sanitation infrastructure. Therefore, the Ministry of Human Settlements, working closely with the Ministry of Water Affairs, plays a central role in addressing the problem of access to water and sanitation.

 

The UN has designated 22 March 2012 as World Water Day.

Our Politicians must show willingness to create effective government!!