The City of Joburg is failing to answer resident's calls with regards to water leaks. (Gallo)
The revelation came from questions answered by the Gauteng local government and housing minister Ntombi Mekgwe in the provincial legislature.
Most losses were from leaking pipes, at a time when government has committed to stamp out water leaks. In his 2010 State of the Nation, President Jacob Zuma committed to halving leaks by 2014.
But the answers show that losses have steadily increased – up by 30-million kilolitres from the previous year. Mekgwe said the main reasons for the loss were a lack of skilled staff, ageing infrastructure, a lack of information, and tariffs not reflecting the full costs of delivering water.
The situation is the same across the country. A report by the Water Research Commission earlier this year found that on average a third of water was lost in municipalities. This was either from leaks, or from people not paying for their water – both are included in "non-revenue water".
Given that it came from information from only half of the country’s municipalities, it predicted that losses could be as high as half across the whole country. Cape Town had the lowest losses among large cities with 25%, while Pietermaritzburg lost 63% of its water.
The cost to municipalities comes because they have to pay for this water. Water affairs owns all the water in the country. It sells this to municipalities, who have to pay for every litre that they receive. To afford this, it charges levies and also receives an allowance from treasury to give each person their constitutionally-guaranteed 25 litres of free water a day.
Any water that is lost must therefore come out of its budget. Other work by the research commission showed this was one of the reasons municipalities do not have money for improving infrastructure.
The Democratic Alliance’s Gauteng local government spokesperson Fred Nel said the leaks meant the province had lost R8-billion last year. This had to be dropped to 15% if the province was to continue providing water and not waste so much money, he said.
Shortfall of 17%
South Africa is the 30th driest country in the world. According to the 2030 Water Resources Group, it will face a shortfall of 17% between supply and demand by that year.
Water leaks are also targeted by the national planning commission, which said fixing them is one of the cheapest and quickest ways of ensuring a water crunch does not happen.
Gauteng, with its growing population and industry, faces the biggest crunch in the future. It is already using 98% of its allocated water, and relies on Lesotho for a big chunk of the water sitting in the Vaal Dam. The next stage of the Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme only comes online in 2020, and the province will be running on the edge until then.
Last year Water Affairs Minister Edna Molewa said the country would need to find R570-billion to fix its ageing water infrastructure and build new infrastructure for expanding communities. In many municipalities the water pipes were over a century old.
With the money not available, she said this could only be raised through public-private partnerships. But other work by the research commission has shown that this will lead to an increase in the cost of water, which affects those who already cannot afford water.