A full 97% of the country's sewage system infrastructure is 'dilapidated' and the overall neglect of the country's water and sanitation systems will cost R56 billion to repair.
At the bottom of the cesspit in the findings was Mpumalanga's waste water treatment works scoring a vile 39 (more than 5 times acceptable risk levels), while the North West ranked second – at 33. Barkly East (Eastern Cape) scored 14 on the cumulative risk rating (twice the acceptable risk levels)
Hidden Mortality
From January to April 2008, more than 80 Barkly East children died of diarrhoeal diseases amid initial official denial, avoidance and obfuscation about a malfunctioning and decaying water reticulation and purification system.An epidemiological report confirmed that the purification process broke down in October 2007, with water tests revealing elevated levels of bacteria and Escherichia coli from then right through until March 2008. The first 15 Barkly East deaths led to a January report recommending the situation be declared an emergency with a wider probe needed. This led to the grim discovery that the baby and child death toll at nearby Sterkspruit was 4 times worse (62 child or baby deaths).
Chief among the reasons identified for the current crisis were
- a lack of planning and budgeting by councillors,
- the awarding of contracts to inexperienced contractors,
- lack of skilled officials to operate facilities,
- inability of officials to budget for and operate infrastructure,
- vacant managerial and operational posts,
- lack of technical ability to plan+manage capital-intensive water services projects,
- mostly unqualified controllers,
- lack of financial skills,
- poor money management.
Source: - SAMJ: South African Medical Journal vol.99 no.8 Cape Town Aug. 2009
Only 3% of SA’s sewage works are operational
The best and the worst never happens in South Africa, Jan Smuts once remarked. And how right the old man was, when you consider the mind-numbing banality that passes as news of national importance these days.
Amazingly, for a country facing the impossible task of bridging the biggest wealth gap in the world, the ongoing personal foibles of its president (which, to be honest, I truly couldn’t care about, as long as he gets the job done), continually hog the headlines, while the shortfall is made up of the rude outbursts of a township tsotsi who has twigged on to the bright idea that nationalising the mines would, after all, be the quickest way of getting really rich.
Meanwhile, the startling revelation that only 3% of the country’s sewage works are operational, makes it only onto page 10 of an Afrikaans daily newspaper, while the English press never get around to actually covering it.
In the North West, as exasperated farmers in Swartruggens and Sannieshof can attest to, there are apparently no fully functional sewage works. Not a single one.
In the Free State, 99% don’t work.
In a country as critically water stressed as South Africa, this should amount to nothing less than a national crisis.
There should be a flurry of ministerial activity, as departmental heads roll, and anxious engineers are shuttled to and fro across the country, as they frantically try to stem the rising tide of preventable pollution.
Instead, the department of water affairs’ official response is that they have, indeed, commissioned a report on the state of sewage works, but are still putting the finishing touches to it.
Meanwhile, livestock carcasses, infected with tapeworm, are turned away at abattoirs after animals drink water with faecal counts way off the charts, polluted water kills hundreds of babies in small-town municipalities, and irrigation farmers wait nervously for their export markets to slam unceremoniously shut.
The bottom line is that no one of consequence seems to be particularly interested in the art of moving turds from point A to point B in such a way that they don’t end up where they don’t belong, like in a river.
An essential engineering pursuit first perfected by the Romans thousands of years ago, but not deemed important here in South Africa, as we pursue some very dubious other priorities. Like replacing the some 7 374 police firearms that have gone missing over the past three years. Arms that almost certainly all end up in the hands of criminals, who definitely don’t take them out to the shooting range.
Instead, they end up being thrust into your face as your house gets ransacked. After all, have you ever heard of burglars using hunting rifles?
So amazingly, a fair whack of violent crime could simply be avoided if police would just hang on to their weapons. The official response? The minister of police, without the slightest hint of irony, announces that he would like, eventually, to see no-one in the country armed, except the police!
Nothing is ever said about how this haemorrhaging of police weapons will be stopped, or what action will be taken against police officers who lose their weapons.
Instead, private citizens, punch-drunk by the criminal onslaught, are threatened with lengthy jail sentences if the new firearm legislation isn’t followed to the letter.
One can only still hope that Smut’s prediction will hold.
Source: - http://www.farmersweekly.co.za/
See also:- http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/
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