Municipalities Must Fix Infrastructure or Lose Funding

Statement by Stephen Moore MP – DA Spokesperson on Water & Sanitation:

The Finance Minister yesterday drew a line in the sand to failing metros like Johannesburg – do your work, fix your infrastructure or lose your funding.

The DA backs this accountability measure and the Water Minister must heed to this in her Budget. The Minister has been allocated R45.1bn over the medium-term on infrastructure grants to municipalities.

If she does not condition tranches of these grants to infrastructure maintenance targets, the Minister of Water will be complicit to more taxpayer funds going down the drain, and the DA will hold her to account.

Metros, from Johannesburg, eThekwini to Nelson Mandela Bay, have failed residents by not using hard-earned rates and taxes to deliver quality infrastructure for basic services.

The DA in councils across our country will push to ensure budgets are ring-fenced for infrastructure maintenance.

Johannesburg, notably, would rather ‘sweep’ money on undisclosed items – a case which the DA has escalated to the Information Regulator and to court, as Johannesburg will not fess up to what the funds are being used on.

The DA also backs the recommendation that contractors that do not deliver on infrastructure projects must be blacklisted.

From the Giyani Water Project in Limpopo to the uMkhomazi Dam Project in KwaZulu-Natal to the national Lesotho Highlands Project, projects across the country are stalled or delayed with tens of billions of rands being wasted on shoddy contractor work.

We expect to see this implemented by the Water Department, and we will seek strong accountability.

Minister Majodina has binary choice on whether to continue to absolve failure or put service delivery first.

DA local governments ensure water security for residents.

This year’s elections will decide whether residents live with basic rights or continue in indignity.