By The business community, in particular the mining sector and residents of the Free State and the Northern Cape will soon experience effective, reliable and un-interrupted water supply following the repositioning of Vaal Water Central.
Water is essential to the smooth running of the economy, as such, the water board has adopted an aggressive strategy towards ensuring that its areas of supply have adequate water supply. Vaal Central Water has adopted a five year strategy plan to implement its new mandate and assist municipalities like Maluti-A-Phofung in resolving their persistent water supply challenges.
Speaking to The Business Weekly, the CEO for Vaal Central Water Mr Luvuyo Ntoyi said the mandate of the water board is no longer confined to the south of the Free State, but its reach has now been extended to supply water for two provinces.
“In terms of our new mandate and reconfiguration of Vaal Central Water, our responsibilities stretch now from the former Southern Free State to the most of the Free State, as well as the Northern Cape.
Our role now is to be able to ensure that as part of the state owned entity for the Department of Water and Sanitation, is to provide sustainable water supply to our area of supply so that we ensure that all areas we are servicing have got adequate water supply,” said Ntoyi.
Ntoyi explained that Vaal Central Water’s project is part of the national strategic projects of the country with the purpose of ensuring that there is sustainable water supply in the country and ensure that there is proper development in the country.
“Vaal Central becomes very critical in repositioning itself to ensure that, from a water resource point of view, we are able to tap in in this type of investments that are done by the country in order to ensure that all of our clients, which is the big municipalities as well as the mines have got adequate water supply that we can provide them with,” said the CEO Luvuyo Ntoyi.
Ntoyi said the water board has repositioned itself to play a leading role in its areas of supply in both provinces to ensure that there is adequate supply of water. Vaal Central will not only be supplying water but will also invest in the upgrade of water infrastructure in municipalities in order to realise its five year goal.
According to the CEO, in instances where there is lack of capacity in municipalities, the Department of Water and Sanitation appoints Vaal Central Water and other boards to act as implementing agents on behalf of the municipalities to ensure that there is adequate water supply.
“The current interventions that we have that the department has actually appointed us on is in Maluti-A-Phofung, where we make sure that we refurbish all the waste water treatment works, as well as the water treatment works, and the reservoirs and the distribution lines to ensure that we end the challenge that Maluti-A-Phofung has been having of inadequate water supply.
We are deep into that particular intervention, it is our second year now and hope that come year five, we would have completed and make sure that all areas of Maluti-A-Phofung will be able to get adequate water supply in the area,” he said.
Luvuyo Ntoyi told The Business Weekly that there is an amount of R5 billion the water board is investing through the collaboration of themselves and the Department of Water and Sanitation to upgrade all the waste water treatments, all the pump stations, all the water treatment works as well as the reservoirs in Maluti-A-Phofung to end the intermittent supply of water in the area.
One of the challenges the water board will have to overcome, is that of owing or none-paying municipalities, to this end, Ntoyi said Vaal Central has implemented a stakeholder strategy whereby they will be engaging with municipalities, as well as business to introduce themselves and engage with them on challenges they would raise, sign service level agreements and billing.
Ntoyi affirmed that the water board does have the necessary skills required to implement its new strategy to ensure that they achieve their five year goal. Vaal Central Water is already hard at work and is in its second year of the five years.
“We are currently hard at work, in fact, if you look at our approach; our approach is multi-pronged, in a sense that we have got some immediate interventions, we also got some short-term interventions and medium to long-term interventions; and in all those interventions, part of our strategy was to say, we can’t do this type of infrastructure without actually engaging our stakeholders.
Our key stakeholders in this instance would be our businesses, it would also be our municipalities, so that when we do planning, we can do planning together so that we are able to do proper project pipelining to ensure that what type of infrastructure or services are required and by when, from either businesses or municipalities,” he said.
“Our program is a five year program and we are already on year two and there is already some significant improvement that is being registered both at municipal level as well as at the business level, in particular from the mining sector as well as agriculture, because those are our biggest customers from a business point of view.
And because we are doing this project pipelining together, they are able to come in and if there are any challenges, we do hold project steering committee meetings, we do hold stakeholder meetings every second month where we then take stock together between ourselves as well as businesses and municipalities and then we are able to report progress together and if there are any challenges that a faced within that particular implementation, we are able to deal with them speedily and immediately,” concluded Vaal Central Water CEO Luvuyo Ntoyi.
