Less than half of South Africa’s drinking water is compliant with chemical water quality standards, with 55% of tested water systems classed as having ‘a bad status’.
This emerges from the Department of Water and Sanitation’s latest Blue Drop Watch Report released last month. It finds that only 38% of drinking water has excellent microbiological quality, and only 11% has good quality.
BusinessTech reports that mismanagement and criminal syndicates stall improvements and sabotage critical pipelines.
The business news site quotes Mike Muller, professor and civil engineer at the Wits School of Governance, as having told eNCA: ‘You can have good infrastructure, but if you do not have good management, you will get nothing out of it’.
Approximately three million kilolitres of potable water are lost daily due to inadequate infrastructure and leaks.
According to BusinessTech, Antony Turton from the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State noted that the water crisis was similar to the crisis at Eskom, with rampant crime, vandalism, and mismanagement taking their toll.
Turton said criminality was deeply embedded in the water management systems. Criminals sabotaged sewage systems and then applied for a tender to install an emergency pump to bypass the problem they created.
[Image: Peter Schmidt from Pixabay]