Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning
- Whether the City of Cape Town took measures to improve access to water supply to informal settlements for the 21-day Covid-19 lockdown period; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
- how many informal settlements in the City of Cape Town do not have access to water supply with a minimum flow of 10 litres per minute and are not within 200 metres of a stand;
- (a) what assessments of adequate water supply during the Covid-19 national lockdown period were conducted by the municipalities in the province or by the provincial Department of Local Government and (b) what were the findings of any such assessments;
- what steps did his Department take to intervene or to support municipalities to address inadequate water supply to informal settlements?
- Yes, the City of Cape Town did take measures to improve access to water supply to informal settlements for the 21-day Covid-19 lockdown period.
Between Friday 27 March 2020 and 07 April 2020, the City supplied approximately 4 million litres of water via 30 water tankers to informal settlements without access to water.
The City will install 93 x 2 700 litre water tanks. These tanks will either be connected to the existing reticulation network or filled with water tankers.
The National Department of Water and Sanitation has further pledged to provide 244 water tanks. The city is following a process of taking due consideration into the evaluating the operational costs and will further communicate with the National Department on the way forward.
The reasons for these settlements not having access to water is due to some informal settlements located on recently invaded land. In many of these instances, the land was never zoned for human settlement, and as a result the proximity to existing piped infrastructure is too far to immediately connect to new infrastructure.
Many of the settlements are also located on land that is not owned by the City. In these instances, services cannot be provided on the site without written consent from the landowner.
- There are 37 informal settlements in the City of Cape Town which not all households have access to a water point within the stipulated 200-meter distance.
(3)(a) The Department of Local Government conducted a Provincial Wide drought and water security assessment in November 2019. During this assessment the Department categorised all local municipalities and towns in the Province in terms of their water security risk.
As a result of the interventions of the Department in 2017 and 2018 and good rainfall received in the western parts of the Province, the West Coast, Cape Winelands and Overberg municipalities were categorised as low risk, while the Central Karoo and Garden Route was categorised as medium to high risk.
(b) Based on these assessments, the Department continued with its implementation of Drought Recovery Action Plans in order to ensure water security for these high-risk towns. The Department therefore remains confident that all towns of the Western Cape has adequate access to bulk water.
The Department is however aware of several informal settlements across the Province with limited access to water services. On the 24 March 2020, the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements requested local municipalities to provide information on informal settlements that had a shortfall in the number of standpipes and sanitation facilities. The information provided by the municipalities was consolidated by the Department and provided to the National Department of Water and Sanitation
- The Department of Local Government assisted and participated in the following actions by the National Department of Water and Sanitation and the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements.
Based on the information received from municipalities and consolidated by the Department of Human Settlements, DWS allocated and provided water tanks to all municipalities within the Province in order to improve access to water at informal settlements.
