Water Services Authorities Research Articles

A drinking water quality framework for South Africa

In recognition of the importance of safe drinking water to public health, DWAF initiated a project to draft a Drinking Water Quality Framework for South Africa to enable effective management of drinking water quality and the protection of public health. The Framework is based on a preventative risk management approach, which is comprehensive from catchment to consumer. The approach promotes an understanding of the entire water supply system, the events that can compromise drinking water quality and the operational control necessary for optimising drinking water quality and protecting public health. However, the Framework also recognises the challenges facing water services authorities (WSAs) in South Africa, and advocates a continual incremental improvement approach towards long-term targets. Short- and medium-term intervention strategies were developed as well as a longer term Drinking Water Quality Management Strategy to achieve the vision of ‘Effective Drinking Water Quality Management Ensuring Safe Drinking Water’. The drinking water quality management project also developed a number of supportive documents and tools to provide the water sector with the information needed to monitor, manage, communicate and regulate drinking water quality.

Economic Analysis of Water Supply Cost Structure in the Middle Olifants Sub-Basin of South Africa

Using data gathered from the National Treasury of South Africa,I examine the structure of water supply costs and tariffs of Water Service Authorities (WSAs) in the Middle Olifants sub-basin of South Africa. Using the translog cost function method, the marginal cost of water supply and economies of scale are estimated. Comparison of tariffs and marginal costs show that the estimated marginal cost is higher than the actual tariff paid by consumers. This implies that WSAs in the Middle Olifants are not charging enough to recover the costs of the water services. Thus, among other things, pricing of water at its marginal cost would partly assist in solving the cost recovery problem. Raised tariffs would in turn contribute to improved efficiency of water use. As evidenced by estimation results of returns to scale (greater than one), amalgamation of WSAs would be economically advantageous. Hence, reversing the process of transferring water services‘ authority to ‗local‘ municipality level and thus up-scaling WSAs into the ‗district‘ municipality level is an important policy option for improving water services efficiency in the Middle Olifants sub-basin of South Africa.

“Crossing over”: appropriate private sector principles, to operate more reliable public sector water services

Private sector institutions utilise many different business methods, some of which can selectively be adapted for use by organisations outside the private sector, to the benefit of their service delivery responsibilities. But the best of the appropriate practices from the private sector have often “not crossed over”.The Water Research Commission (WRC) of South Africa, working in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), finds that the concept of franchising, so successfully used by the private sector to deliver many goods and services, if applied to water services operation and maintenance, could alleviate and address many challenges in the management of water services. At the same time, franchising could provide an ideal stimulus to support the development of local enterprises, all within the municipal service delivery environment.Franchisee water service providers, dependent for their livelihood on the success of their business, would have a strong incentive to perform, and would also enjoy the benefit of the franchisor’s expert guidance and quality assurance. Some areas for potential franchising include meter management, billing, plumbing, pressure management, sewer maintenance, and wastewater treatment processes.The help from the franchisor would be of particular value to water services authorities at a distance from the major urban centres. Few of these authorities can afford to employ competent qualified staff, and often non-compliance with the laid down performance standards is a direct consequence of this lack. Significant improvements would soon be seen if the generally under-qualified and under-resourced water services staff could have this ongoing support, mentoring and quality control — or if the authority could enter into partnerships with small local enterprises or NGOs which would, through franchising, enjoy the necessary ongoing support, mentoring and quality control, and would have quick access to expert assistance when they needed it.

A literature review of the twinning approach in supporting developmental water services by water services institutions (WSIs) and water services authorities (WSAs) in South Africa

The purpose of this paper is to review international literature and to contextualise it to South Africa's water services institutions. On the basis of the literature evidence, the following questions will be discussed: • How is “twinning” to be conceptualised and operationalised • What are the expected outputs and outcomes of implementation of the twinning approach • How to draw the lessons from international literature for implementing a twinning approach in South Africa's water services institutions and exploit the benefits thereof While it is often not feasible to measure success of an approach in a scientific fashion, this paper shows that this less- researched approach can improve integrated strategic objectives of developmental water services and co-operative governance in South African spheres of government in general and water services institutions in particular. Inductively, it is recommended that the hands-on support on developmental water services in South Africa provides an opportunity to explore and exploit the twinning approach benefits and outcomes thereof. Such benefits and outcomes include, inter alia, addressing WSAs and WSIs capacity constraints for implementation of developmental water services reforms as per national targets described in the Water Services Strategic Framework (2003) and other pieces of legislation pursuant to post-Apartheid local government developmental agenda (LGDA). Water SA Vol.31 (3) 2005: pp.335-344

Implementing the South African water policy: holding the vision while exploring an uncharted mountain

This paper discusses the long-term implementation of the South African National Water Policy of 1997, and addresses some of the difficult issues of the management and leadership of large change processes. Although the vision established by the water policy is clear, actually achieving that vision on the ground will require a robust, flexible, long-term implementation plan that is supported by all the role players responsible for water management in South Africa: Government, water services authorities, water services providers such as water boards, catchment management agencies (CMAs), water user associations, research organisations and the private sector. In this paper, we advocate a strategic, adaptive approach to policy implementation, which equates to "learn-by-doing", to meet the challenge of maintaining sufficient forward momentum in policy implementation, while still making sound decisions that take account of technical, environmental, economic, social and political factors. Water SA Vol.29(4): 353-358