Thank you Deputy Chairperson. Minister we welcome the new regulations. We just want to find out why the department took so long to penalise those who were applying the pesticides and other contaminations? What will be the consequences when people have defaulted on the regulations, moving forward? Thank you.
The MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: Thank you very
much, hon member. I think that what is important for the hon member to understand is that the environment is a competence which is shared among national, provincial and local governments. Particularly in the metros, the enforcement officials are at local government level. One of the reasons we have set up this particular task team in the City of Ethekwini is to understand why these offices are not carrying out their enforcement functions and to understand how we can strengthen them when they are doing that.
We have our Green Scorpions whom we send to situations like that but you would understand that as a national department we really require the municipalities to be regularly monitoring what effluent is being placed in rivers by industries which they have licensed and from whom they received money.
Obviously, in issuing those licences, they would also be taking into account the fact that they would need to be monitoring what those industries do. Part of the reason we set up that particular task team is to try and understand why this enforcement role - which is primarily a municipal role in this instance - is not happening properly and how do we strengthen it and enable it to happen properly. Thank you.