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The Minister of Water and Sanitation today held the first meeting with MEC’s responsible for Cooperative Governance in the nine (9) provinces at Southern Sun O.R. Tambo Hotel, O.R. Tambo International Airport; Kempton Park.

This MinMEC, as meetings between the Minister and MEC's are referred towas held to respond to the challenges that we face in the areas of water and sanitation. The aim of the meeting was to coordinate a formalized and coherent approach that will allow the national government and provinces to better manage the water resources of the country, roll-out water and sanitation services and improve planning and financial management.

In 2009, the Government of South Africa adopted the outcomes based approach to improve the way it plans and manages its work in line with National Development Plan, vision 2030.

Government has committed to doing things differently and improves coordination across all spheres of government in a quest to improve the delivery of service and guarantee the reliability of the service that is provided.

The meeting that was held today was a first in what will be regular engagements amongst national government and provinces to ensure that water and sanitation delivery challenges, plans, policy-matters and priorities are tackled.

The meeting placed emphasis on a number of factors that require the attention of government.

Minister Mokonyane and the MECs agreed on the following things to be implemented by June 2017.

• Sanitation services Norms and Standards
• Innovative sanitation solutions to reduce reliance on water borne sanitation systems
• The importance of  proper health and hygiene practices and public education
• Promotion of investment opportunities in sanitation linked with new industries and skills development (in line with engagements at World Economic Forum 2017)
• Joint - planning covering all three spheres of government for public infrastructure supported by strict regulation and compliance enforcement.

Minister Mokonyane said the meeting also received an update on the drought and it is clear that the country remain drought stricken.

“We appreciate that there has been some good rains that have had a slight impact on our water reserves and brought about some hope towards a recovery but we again emphasize that we are still firmly in a drought and have not recovered significantly to relax the restrictions to water use that we have implemented in a number of provinces”, she said.
 

Issued by the Department of Water and Sanitation