Durban — With water being a scarce resource in South Africa and Water Day approaching next week, Plastics SA, an umbrella body representing the local plastics industry, together with the Southern African Pipe Manufacturers Association (Sappma), have decided to emphasise the role plastics play in ensuring South Africans have access to reliable, clean and safe drinking water and sanitation.
This is according to Sappma CEO, Jan Venter. He said that in 2015, the world made a global commitment to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to ensure everyone contributes to water and sanitation management by 2030.
“Today, eight years later, the sad reality is the crisis has not yet subsided.
“This is especially true in South Africa, where far too many people continue to be denied basic human rights to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.”
Venter said that according to the most recent data, the world was still frighteningly off track and nowhere near meeting its goals on a global scale and that governments would need to work four times faster to meet the SDGs.
“As a result, all efforts for this year’s World Water Week are aimed specifically at accelerating the change required to solve the world’s water and sanitation crisis. This is not something that can be accomplished by a single person or organisation, but rather requires a collaborative effort from everyone,” said Venter.
He said over the past decade, Sappma has repeatedly raised the alarm about the fact that South Africa’s water infrastructure is ageing and that concrete or steel water pipes installed in the 1960s are now long overdue for replacement.
“We have been pleading with the government to invest in much-needed pipeline upgrades and repairs across the country. We have continually emphasised the importance of replacing ageing and failing pipes with HDPE and PVC pipes bearing the Sappma mark as a quality assurance that these pipes have been independently audited and confirmed to have been manufactured in accordance with international standards and only pipes bearing the Sappma logo are guaranteed to last 50 to 100 years,” said Venter.
He said despite numerous disruptions in water supply, and the increasing risk of water shedding, the government has promised to spend more than R121 billion on water infrastructure in the medium term.
“We can only hope the money is finally being used for its intended purpose and that it is making its way to our plastic pipe manufacturers.
“We emphasised that this has become an urgent matter following a cholera outbreak in Gauteng in early March as a result of inadequate sanitation and insufficient access to safe drinking water,” said Venter.
Earlier this month, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) kick-started National Water Month, which is conceptualised along with the annual commemoration of World Water Day spearheaded by the UN and is usually observed on March 22.
DWS spokesperson Wisane Mavasa said the department was working towards achieving water security and managing water and sanitation services effectively.
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