Question NW3230 to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
20 November 2023 - NW3230
Van Der Walt, Ms D to ask the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
Whether, with reference to the inability of municipalities, particularly the Bela-Bela Local Municipality, to solve the daily electrical outages unrelated to load shedding, provide clean drinking water to all wards daily, repair streetlights and switch on new streetlights installed years ago, her department will instruct municipalities to undertake a full technical audit, which must co-exist with the Master Plan for the current and next five to ten years, on all their electrical infrastructure and/or equipment on the network; if not, why not; if so, on what date?
Reply:
The Department of Co-operative Governance (DCOG) will not instruct municipalities to undertake a full technical audit as DCOG has no authority to do so. DCOG however provides support, together with all the Provincial Governments and the rest of National Government, to municipalities in accordance with the District Development Model (DDM) to perform their functions in terms of section 154 of the Constitution.
DCOG provides technical support for infrastructure development to municipalities including Bela Bela Local Municipality (BBLM) through the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA) by deploying technical professionals. These professionals provide technical support throughout the project life cycle from integrated development planning, infrastructure delivery to operation and maintenance. This support includes the infrastructure assessments which are part of technical audits, development of master plans, project documentation, Asset Management Plans including Operations and Maintenance Plans.
DCOG monitors the performance of municipalities together with sector departments like the Department of Minerals and Energy (DMRE) on electricity provision, and the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) on water services provision as well as the National Treasury. Sector departments also perform assessments, which are technical audits, for example the Green Drop and Blue Drop Certification Programmes by DWS.
Should municipalities fail to perform their functions, the national government will intervene after provincial governments have done so, in terms of section 139 of the Constitution.
Reported outages in BBLM are attended to by a standby maintenance team. Water outages have currently been implemented to manage demand which is not met by the bulk supply from both Magalies Water Board and BBLM’s own water treatment works. BBLM’s street lights have been negatively affected by the theft of streetlight cables. BBLM has planned and implemented a multi-year theft proof mechanism due to insufficient budget to roll it out at once to the whole municipality. A few areas have been attended to with an overhead line which has proven to be efficient in addressing the theft of cables.
End.