Drought relief plans hobbled

Interventions require money that the City doesn’t have

THERE is no money! This is the blunt message from both the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape government to questions about when their water augmentation plans will yield results to avoid “Day Zero”.

Government officials and the portfolio committees on co-operative governance and traditional affairs, water and sanitation and agriculture met yesterday to discuss the interventions made so far to avoid a shutdown of the water supply in the province.

Graham Paulse, the acting head of department for the provincial Local Government Department, said their biggest challenge was funds.

“We don’t have the funding for all the augmentation schemes, but we have to plan for it. We don’t have enough money for tankers and trucks for when the taps run dry in areas like Beaufort West or Kannaland (Ladismith),” Paulse said.

Xanthea Limberg, the mayoral committee member for water services, said her department had prioritised money but it was being held up by the National Treasury to start a third adjustment budget.

While the City is applying for loans and waiting for funds, the water crisis worsens and Day Zero, when the taps run dry, approaches.

“We have funds that we can work with from cash reserves and other money we have prioritised in our department. We already have the Green Bond, and from it R2 billion is available to us. We have used some of that money on our waste-water infrastructure, which is a big part of our resilience plan. The challenge comes in that all the projects need operational funds, too,” Limberg said.

She said they had written to Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba to have a third adjustment of the City’s budget to make money available for water projects.

“We have not heard anything from the National Treasury as yet. We also have other concessionary loans (applications) at the moment,” she said.

There was a unanimous message that the government needed to prioritise more money for the drought-stricken province as the authorities struggled to keep up with costly capital projects.

Minister of Water and Sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane said the government would do everything possible to avoid Day Zero.

“We will never allow a situation of a total shutdown,” Mokonyane told the joint sitting. “It is extremely important to avoid dry taps in homes and irrigation systems for the agricultural sector because of the economic and social impact not having water would have,” she said.

Trevor Balzer, the deputy director-general in the Department of Water and Sanitation, said: “It’s highly unlikely that we are going to get any more rain for the winter season in the Western Cape. And that’s the critical issue we have to deal with.”

He said the province’s dams were currently at an average level of 35.9%, compared with 60% at the same time last year. With use estimated at around 2.2% of dam levels per month, getting to next winter was going to be a high-pressure exercise. The only hope was early winter rain next year, or unseasonal rain in January, February and March, he said.

Blazer said the floods in other parts of the country were indications that climate change was altering weather patterns.

Western Cape MEC for Local Government, Anton Bredell, said funds remained a huge challenge, especially for the government’s desalination project.

“We need to step up our game and find the money, because we will run into serious trouble, especially if we don’t get rain,” he said.

THE CRIME statistics released on Tuesday show a decrease of 4.3% in reported sexual offences from the previous year.

In light of this, we again note our concerns about the under-reporting of sexual offences. This clearly signals a lack of faith in our criminal justice system.

As an NGO working to address violence against women, the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust believes the best way to rebuild faith in the criminal justice system, as well as to address the high rates of rape, is to strengthen the criminal justice system, specifically through the re-establishment and continued roll-out of sexual offences courts.

A ministerial advisory task team on the adjudication of sexual offence matters released a report on the re-establishment of the sexual offences courts by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development in 2013. It recommended the department re-establish sexual offences courts.

According to the official information provided by the department, there are currently 60 sexual offences courtrooms established across the country.

However, since the department is primarily concerned with the infrastructure of these courtrooms, we are concerned that their focus is most likely on infrastructure alone.

For sexual offences courts to be successful, the emphasis must be on specialisation, and not only infrastructure. Specialist magistrates, specialist prosecutors and specialist support services are required to ensure these courts function properly.

Are all 60 courts listed by the department fully functioning sexual offences courts, or are some of them an empty shell or hobbling along at best?

During the second phase of the roll-out, the department plans to roll out a further 106 sexual offences courtrooms. We believe that this must be done by making sure that specialist personnel and services are available, as well as special infrastructure.

We believe all survivors of sexual offences should have access to a specialised court that, first and foremost, offers specialist personnel and services.

We therefore urge the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, together with the National Prosecuting Authority and other government stakeholders, to continue with the planned and funded roll-out of sexual offences courts across the country.