The FF Plus welcomes the announcement by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) that the quality of municipalities' water and their management thereof will be audited once again and that municipal officials guilty of polluting water sources will be held accountable.
This announcement follows after the FF Plus raised the issue on more than once occasion in Parliament. The DWS stopped conducting the annual audits of water quality (blue drop) and water management (green drop) in 2014 already.
During a meeting of the parliamentary Committees on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and Water and Sanitation, the FF Plus insisted that these audits must urgently be reinstituted due to the pollution of the country's water sources.
The FF Plus also pointed out that it must be ensured that water supply systems and sewage management at municipalities are overseen by professional and competent officials.
Important water sources, like the Vaal River, have been seriously affected by pollution due to, among other things, the incompetence of officials in key positions that lead to the collapse of sewage plants and other forms of water infrastructure.
The FF Plus had to step in many times and lodge complaints with the Department's investigative units, the Blue and Green Scorpions, against the local ANC-controlled municipalities, like Matlosana (Klerksdorp, Stilfontein, Orkney and Hartbeesfontein), as well as district municipalities, like Ngaka Modiri Molema, which serves a large part of the North West province.
The DWS must ensure that ongoing investigations are prioritised and that guilty officials are held accountable. The incessant pollution of the country's water sources surely poses one of the biggest threats to the sustainable survival of the country and the management of these valuable resources must not be left in the hands of incompetent ANC-deployed cadres any longer.
In the upcoming local government elections, voters must stand up and stand with the FF Plus to ensure that municipalities are rid of the incompetent and unwilling officials who have allowed such critical infrastructure to collapse on their watch and who are, thus, jeopardising the country's future.
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