The Makana Water and Sanitation Forum will be formally established at the Recreation Hall in Albany Road on Thursday 5 May at 10am (date changed).
The Makana Water and Sanitation Forum will be formally established at the Recreation Hall in Albany Road on Thursday 5 May at 10am (date changed).
This follows an initial briefing meeting that took place at the same venue at the end of February, where representatives of civil society and special interest organisations, as well as at least one ordinary member of the public, were addressed by Amanias Mamabolo, from the Department of Water and Sanitation.
Some of the points raised at that meeting were that the Makana Customer Care Unit must be operational and efficient in dealing with queries; that such a forum should learn from the experience of setting up work streams during the tenure of former administrator Pam Yako and that the technical department should present the forum with information about the status quo of water and sanitation in Makana.
The first Water and Sanitation Forum was attended by representatives from Water for Dignity, the Kowie Catchment Campaign, Wessa, the Institute for Water Research and Mobisam, as well as ward councillors.
Mamabolo, referring to the document distributed at the start of the meeting, explained that the Department, in carrying out its mandate to manage and regulate water and sanitation services, is required to engage stakeholders through one-on-one discussions as well as community forums.
The forum being established was in line with this requirement and local representatives included Makana's water services technician Thembela Ralo, and councillor Nombulelo Masoma.
The document said there were 16 Water Services Authorities in the Eastern Cape, made up from five District municipalities, two Metropolitan and nine local municipalities.
"The province is characterised by high backlogs and incidents of water interruptions and sewage spillages due to non-functionality of schemes," the document said.
Areas prioritised were planning and addressing backlogs, and implementation – including access, poor services, disruptions, revenue and spillages.
According to the document, among the objectives of the community based water and sanitation forums are to ensure government direct interaction with different communities on issues that affect them on a daily basis, reduce service delivery protests and promote two-way information flow about the provision of reliable water and sanitation services.
**Update 13 April 2016 at 8.40am: The meeting has again been postponed with apologies from the Department of Water and Sanitation, who say: "The main reason for postponement is to allow DWS and Proto-CMA to finalise the collaboration process that has started in order to have one Forum in Makana. It has been noted that there is another process to establish Catchment Management Forum, and both Forums have similarities and common goals and objectives, and they are established under the banner of DWS, and the targeted stakeholders are the same."
