Chairperson, Ministers and Members of the House, Cope welcomes the report of the Ad hoc Committee on Co-ordinated Oversight on Service Delivery. Parliament has a major role to play in ensuring that the provisions of the Constitution are met.
The protests that befell the country in the recent past have been about the failure of municipalities to deliver services to millions of our people - the most basic services like water, sanitation, roads, electricity and housing. How can such important constitutional obligations be given to structures that lack capacity and political will? It is no secret that these structures are known to be terribly undercapacitated and often lack strategic and administrative vision. How do you expect them to function effectively and deliver services effectively by taking over such huge responsibilities without the funds and budgets needed? These capacity problems have led to some municipalities returning unspent funds to the Treasury annually.
Cope discovered, in a vast majority of municipalities we visited, that in some instances there is only one or no engineers employed, and the town planners have poor or no knowledge of town planning, because they were party-political deployees out of their depth!
South Africa is one of the driest countries in the world, and we are running out of the little amount of water we have left. Our water purification systems have been found wanting and outdated, such that the water we end up with has been dangerously contaminated even for human consumption. Cope dreads what the outcome of this is going to be. Government promised people that the bucket system would be phased out by now, yet people in many communities still make use of the bucket system.
In view of the water crisis that we are facing in the country, the Water Research Commission and the Water Institute of South Africa need to be invited regularly to the portfolio committee to advise Parliament on the magnitude of this problem and alert us to the red flags.
The Minister of Human Settlements has recently been bearing down on renegade developers whose developments to these poor communities cost the government over R40 billion to destroy and rebuild sloppy developments. This calls for stricter scrutiny of the role of housing inspectors and bodies such as the National Home Builders Registration Council, NHBRC, who are supposed to monitor and inspect houses before they are finalised.
Cope supports the report and calls on this House to ensure that the recommendation and implementation plan proposed by the committee be accepted and put into action by this House. Thank you. [Applause.]