Providing all households in South Africa with sanitation remains a major challenge, newly-appointed Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica told MPs yesterday.

Opening debate on her budget vote in the National Assembly, she said a further 300 000 homes around the country would be supplied with basic sanitation this year.

However, there was currently not enough money to provide all homes in urban and peri-urban areas with flush toilets.

Sonjica said under the Division of Revenue Act, funds for water supply and sanitation investment -- previously managed by the department --would now be allocated to local government.

"The funds will be transferred through the municipal infrastructure grant (MIG) administered by the Department of Provincial and Local Government.

"The water services budget of the department is thus reduced from R2,6-million to R1,3-million," she said.

The total MIG is understood to be R4,5-billion, of which about half is for water and sanitation. The lion's share of this is likely to be spent on water services, leaving less than R1-billion for sanitation.

Sonjica said while excellent progress had been made towards providing safe drinking water to households, "the same cannot be said for sanitation".

"Our current policy focuses on firstly achieving the very basic levels of service -- usually VIP (ventilated improved pit) toilets.

"While these are perfectly adequate in the rural areas, I am not convinced they are appropriate in urban areas."

Sonjica said she was working on a plan with provincial and local government Minister Sydney Mufamadi, "to determine alternative strategies for reaching the sanitation targets and providing waterborne sanitation in urban and peri-urban areas".

An announcement on this would be made in due course.

"I know that funding currently available for sanitation is not adequate for us to achieve our targets if we want to provide waterborne sanitation in these areas.

"We will need more investment funds, and also to ensure municipalities can pay for the operating costs; for water to flush toilets; (and) for the staff, chemicals and electricity needed to run the wastewater treatment plants, so that we do not pollute our rivers," she said.

On concerns that local government was not able to run water and sanitation systems reliably, Sonjica said a recent survey by the Human Sciences Research Council suggested that the main problem was in fact "the ability of service providers to keep the water running".

To address this, "R265-million is on this year's budget for local government support and capacity building, and this will be supplemented by generous donor funding", she said. – Sapa.