Question NW3830 to the Minister of Water and Sanitation

Reply:

The table below provides details on number of applications for water authorization licenses handled by the Department of Water and Sanitation during the period 2017-2022:

Applications for water licences	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	Total
a) Rejected	38	112	54	48	37	289
b) Successful	700	779	625	626	728	3548
c) Received	888	937	1023	998	940	4786

The Department did not manage to finalise all applications within the financial years in questions due to capacity challenges. The applications were carried over to the following financial years as indicated in the table below:

2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020	2020-2021	2021-2022
150	46	344	324	175

The Department of Water and Sanitation, with the assistance of Operation Vulindlela has implemented measures to improve the turnaround times for processing of licences as follows:

1. The Organizational Structure of the Department was revised in September 2022 to cater for the establishment of sub-directorates solely focusing on the function of water use authorisation at provincial offices.
2. The Department has filled 100 out of the 120 new technical vacant positions within the sub-directorates that were established in 2022.
3. An in-house mandatory water use authorisation training programme has been developed and implemented from August 2022 to improve the skills of the officials involved in processing water use authorisation.
4. The Water Use Licence On-line platform (E-WULAAS) was enhanced to include a performance monitoring and escalation system that provides for an early warning system and escalation when the allocated days for officials within the authorisation value chain are exceeded.
5. New and revised documents aimed at minimising amendments (revised water use licence condition templates and WULA summary reports) were implemented.

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