Civil society groups affected by water challenges that have plagued the City of Johannesburg, have demanded greater transparency and participation in the city’s water turnaround strategy.

Last week, city mayor Dada Morero, addressing the media over the new plan, claiming the city is finally confronting its water crisis head-on.

He said the new water turnaround strategy is aimed at restoring reliability, accountability, and public confidence in efforts to address some of the challenges that have impacted the provision of uninterrupted water provision.

On Saturday, affected residents, under the Water Crisis Committee, handed over their memorandum of demands to the mayor following months of water challenges in communities such as Westbury, Coronationville, Claremont, and Denver.

This comes as the group, made up of residents from different communities and several civic groups, picketed outside the city’s council chambers.

The residents, who have spent months battling water shedding and water throttling are calling for urgent action to stop the deepening crisis.

Water CAN’s Executive Director, Ferrial Adam, said that despite the new strategy, the mayor has not fully demonstrated that his administration has the capacity to fully implement this strategy.

“We welcome and support the mayor’s strategy, but we are concerned about the commitment of the city to implement it and the pace of its implementation.  For this reason, we want greater transparency in implementation and the ability of civil society groups to monitor the process going forward,” said Adam.

Adam indicated that among the demands being made against the mayor is the ensure adequate funding is given to resolve long-standing challenges and infrastructure collapse, which has made the situation worse.

“We want the city to ringfence water and sanitation infrastructure funding by December 2025. This allows for the revenues from the sale of water to be strictly used for Joburg Water and related infrastructure and not reallocated to other services in Johannesburg.  The executive mayor has implied that this could be done by June 2026, but it appears that deadlines keep moving,” Adam added.

The committee has accused the city of failing to restore and protect the budget allocated to water challenges, saying residents are deeply concerned about reports that R4 billion was taken from Joburg Water by the City of Johannesburg and not returned.

“While “sweeping” of municipal accounts is permitted under National Treasury rules, funds must be returned. The City’s failure to do so violates Treasury regulations and raises serious concerns given the requirements of the Municipal Finance Management Act,” he added.

Morero said his administration is working around the clock to fix its ageing water infrastructure, which has been blamed for ongoing water supply challenges.

“We are saying service delivery on water challenges is coming. We are going to go point by point in responding to the issues that you have raised. We are going to respond to this memorandum and never think that your issues are not important to us,” he said.

siyabonga.sithole@inl.co.za

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