The standing committee on public accounts has demanded an investigation into a “water tankering” syndicate which targets desperate communities without water.
“There is a proliferation of water tankers anchored in tendering rousing suspicion for corruption,” said committee chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa on Wednesday.
Hlengwa said in his rural village of Mfume in eThekwini, there is water infrastructure, but the community can go for a month or two without accessing water.
He asked whether the department was investigating or working with law enforcement agencies on probing “an organised crime or syndicate of water tanker providers who will go out of business if people received water directly from infrastructure that is there?”
“On top of that, these water tanker drivers are charging people in these communities and the waters routes are inconsistent and communities are at the mercy of these water tanker providers. It can’t be that the country is held to ransom by what is happening.
“This water tankers tendering process is a headache across the country.”
Hlengwa added that the country was basically “saddled with crimes of sabotaging state infrastructure” for the tankers to thrive.
Earlier EFF’s Ntombovuyo Mente told the department that, “parts of KZN, Eastern Cape and Limpopo had water tankers issues and water tankers that were paid for that were nowhere to be found. We need to know how many water tankers were procured by the department, how many reached the people and how many are unaccounted for?”
The DA’s Alfred Lees also questioned the department about malfeasance that took place in the provisions of water tankers in Amathole.
Lees demanded to know what happened to the estimated 17,000 water tanks that were procured “and dumped all over the country” during the pandemic in 2020.
Responding, water and sanitation minister Senzo Mchunu said: “It is a known fact that we have declining local government in SA with regards to the provision of basic services. In some cases municipalities are non-functional.
“The bottom line is that municipal services, with regards to basic provision of services, has declined and water and sanitation is not an exception. We now know that half of the municipalities around the country are underperforming or not performing at all when it comes to water and sanitation.”
Furthermore, he said: “Part of the failure to provide water and sanitation services is capacity, poverty but closer to home it was corruption, lack of billing collection and efficiencies with regards to running water and sanitation services in each municipality.”
Mchunu said in some cases water tanks had become an “official corruption field”.
“This is legitimatised, in some cases, by mayors or people who are providing these services.”
Mchunu said if an individual buys water tankers, surely they will want to make a profit.
“It’s something that is officialised by not providing water infrastructure and water services to communities and then water tankers are provided under the guise that these people need water.”
Mchunu said it was going to be difficult for the department to be expected to fight corruption and provide water at the same time.
“We are focused on water and sanitation and incrementally we are not going to allow these grants, which in our view have been abused in many cases, to be used for hiring or providing tankers to communities unless there is a storm or an emergency.”
He said the department will focus on piped water and bore holing. We are unable to investigate because our hands are full.”
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