ABSTRACT
This was a study of the devolution of water and sanitation management functions from the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and Rand Water Board to Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. This affects the functions and the infrastructure that goes with it. This exercise is the fulfillment of the provisions of Water Services Act that empowers municipalities to become Water Services Authorities and where capacity exists to also become Water Services Providers.'~
It was fo~nd that though constitutionally,water and sanitation functions resort under municipalities, in the area of study, the Tshwane municipality did not directly deliver these functions. This happened due to the fact that Tshwane did not have human capacity to deal with the functions, they provided the funding as a subsidy to Rand Water Board who in turn provided financial support to Odi Retail Water that is currently responsible for water and sanitation management as a subsidiary to Rand Water Board.
The following are recommendations derived from the findings:
I. That the political activities be raised in the areas to encourage people to pay for their services and take responsibility for meter reading on their own like it is happening in Denmark. In Denmark each household reads meters for both water and electricity personally and submits the readings to the municipality for billing. As a result the municipality did not employ special meter readers and by so doing they safe on salaries.
2. That greater resource allocation is made to cover the shortfalls that were experienced due to lack of management capacity and other resources that would enable Tshwane municipality to run the functions on their own.
3. That capacity building and support for professionals be streamlined on
the current Odi Ratil Water staff for future absorption by municipality.
4. That promotion of community-based development be continued to
encourage community ownership on water management functions.
This could be done through the formation of community water associations. While community-based approaches are now accepted as
the norm, the necessary: capacity to support them in most cases does
not generally exist at the higher levels (national, district and local) and
Tshwane needs to look at this.
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Communities currently remain uninterested in taking part in wider water management for a number of reasons, including lack of ownership or control over decisions; lack of real power to make
allocation and use decisions; high transaction costs of involvement;
and poorly developed frameworks by which the views of large
communities can be represented at stakeholder fora. Therefore, Tshwane must make sure that community's interest is supported in all respect.
6. If the municipality cannot handle these functions on its own, then
privatisation should be considered for efficient and effective water and
