South Africa would need to shell out R400-billion to address the maintenance backlog of water and sanitation infrastructure in the country’s worst-performing municipalities. “We’ve estimated that the backlog for water services infrastructure, not only in terms of fixing what’s broken, but also routine or preventative maintenance, is about R400-billion,” Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) director-general, Dr Sean Phillips, told Daily Maverick in an interview this week.
Sam Busa