Thanks very much, House Chair. Minister, due to the fact that Maluti-A-Phofung Local Municipality has been under tremendous pressure of water shortages due to drought and other factors that you have just highlighted, has the department undertaken to prioritise civic education and awareness programmes for the community in the above mentioned municipality to conserve and protect the limited water resources? If so, what have been some of the programmes the department has undertaken in this regard? Thank you.
THE MINISTER OF HUMAN SETTLEMNTS, WATER AND SANITATION: Tomorrow
the technical Minmec consisting of Cogta, Agriculture and ourselves will be meeting to discuss the situation that we are finding ourselves in, and possibly recommend to us whether or not we should declare a drought in which it will be possible for us to
go beyond the boundaries of the law and regulations to get water to the people that are in need right now. But that will only be made known to us after the technical Minmec has met tomorrow. The three Ministers and I will call a press conference and explain what the outcome of that decision is.
In the meantime we have indeed gone out of our way to make sure that we educate our people about the scarcity of water and how they can conserve water. I spent the whole day in Johannesburg at Rand Water with all the media that we could get together to send the simple message that we are a water-scarce country, we are the thirtieth driest country in the world and matters are not getting better for us. We don't have the necessary technology in abundance to be able to harvest water from everywhere that we should. Therefore, for the time being until we find all the solutions that we are going to put out in the master plan, we are asking people to use their water sparingly. That was all over the radio and television on the day on which we called the press conference. Thank you.