Minister of Water and sanitation urges to align project management to budget

He said the preliminary commitments for which contracts have been signed and service providers currently provide 7.5 billion rands.

The Minister of Water and Sanitation, Gugile Nkwinti, said that urgent intervention is needed to realign the administration and planning of the project with the available budget of the department.

The minister said when he presented the department's budget speech on Tuesday in the National Assembly.

"Urgent intervention is needed in the management of our projects, as well as in contract management to ensure that project planning is aligned with the available budget and to prevent our projects from exceeding the budget available," he said. Nkwinti's words come amid concern that the department has faced historical contractual commitments that have not been budgeted.

He said the preliminary commitments for which contracts have been signed and service providers currently provide 7.5 billion rands, including 6.3 billion for infrastructure projects and 1.1 billion rands for goods and operational services.

"We have also noted with concern that in some cases worthless contracts have been concluded, which poses problems in budgeting them accurately, which makes the department vulnerable." Nkwinti also said that the ministry's cube eradication program falls into this category, which historically has caused unauthorized spending caused by excessive spending on the cube eradication program.

"The poor management of projects within the department has created a situation in which service providers are accelerating work at a much faster rate than the department's budget.

"A typical example is our project in Giyani, which was originally scheduled to be completed in 5 years, and has been budgeted accordingly. However, the work was accelerated and completed in a period of two and a half years," he said.

"There is a misalignment between the budget and the milestones of the project, and in some cases, the stages of the project go far beyond the budget," he said.

Nkwinti said there were also crucial projects such as the war against leaks, which were not budgeted by the department.