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President Jacob Zuma on Saturday called for an urgent end to water contamination, saying that spillage of sewerage into South Africa's water supplies would lead to water undrinkable. "We must deal with the spillage of sewerage into our water supplies and other forms of contamination. If we don't deal with it urgently, our water will end up undrinkable because of the high levels of contamination," Zuma said. He was speaking during the official launch of the upgrade of the Nsezi Water treatment plant in Richards Bay on Saturday afternoon. He said challenges in the electricity sector which saw South Africa hit by major blackouts had taught government the importance of addressing future problems before they happened. "The challenge that we still need to address include an ability by some municipalities to roll out infrastructure, and to operate, maintain and rehabilitate water and sanitation infrastructure," he said. It was important the infrastructure was in place to provide portable water to the growing demand because government's objective was for people to have access to water by 2014. "Our country has a critical obligation to meet the Millennium Development Goals. One these goals is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation," Zuma said. - Sapa Quickwire Published on the Web by IOL on 2009-11-21 www.iol.co.za |
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