MPs slam officials over lack of quality reports

The parliamentary portfolio committee has issued a scathing warning to the Department of Water and Sanitation, saying its failure to release water quality reports is illegal.

Officials from the department, which since 2014 has failed to release reports measuring the quality of SA’s water resources, appeared before the committee on Wednesday.

Water users have in the past four years not had any assurances about the quality of water. However, some municipalities have released such reports.

The “green drop” report is a status given to municipalities that comply with good wastewater discharge standards, while the “blue drop” report provides information on the quality of drinking water.

The portfolio committee said the department’s actions were illegal. The committee hit out at “laxity” in the department, which it said was not fulfilling its obligation to release the report annually.

The committee said the negligence contributed directly to water pollution in many rivers, mainly because “assessment mechanisms” were not being implemented.

The Vaal River in Gauteng is one of the most serious cases in which raw sewage has been flowing directly into the river.

Environmentalists and community members have raised the alarm.

Finance minister Tito Mboweni said the government would immediately reprioritise funds to deal with the crisis.

Mboweni said he has sought engineering and other expertise from the military to resolve the crisis.

University of Cape Town’s Future Water Research Institute co-ordinator, Kirsty Carden, slammed the lack of transparency. “This is the sort of information we should know The last green report was not good,” she said.

Parliamentary committee chairperson Mlungisi Johnson said the department promised in January 2017 to deliver the report in October.

“We are now a year from that promised date yet the report is still not here. What the department is doing is illegal, because this laxity undermines the responsibility to ensure the quality of our water resource,” he said.

The committee instructed the department to produce a report detailing the quality of rivers and wastewater treatment infrastructure in 14 days.

Department spokesperson Sputnik Ratau told Business Day that partial blue drop assessments were conducted in 2015 and 2016.

The reports were about more than just quality, he said. “They include overall management of water and wastewater treatment plants.”