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Community achievement: toilets built by communities in Limpopo ready for distribu-tion for the needy families...

Government moves to provide sanitation and water to rural areas in South Africa

Rural development is one the major priorities announced by the President during his State of the Nation address in 2011. Since the year 2007, various ministries have prioritised rural develop-ment.

In 2010, National Treasury established Rural Household Infra-structure Programme (RHIP) and directed the National Depart-ment of Human Settlements to manage a total R1.2 billion in or-der to provide on-site sanitation and some water facilities to rural communities. The allocation of R1.2 billion has been allocated as follows: over the 2010 MTEF i.e. R100 million for 2010/11, R350 million for 2011/12 and R750 million for 2012/13.

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The programmes empowers communities through skills development and project management

Involvement of communities in the rural household infrastructure programme - a job creation programme

The programme also gives beneficiaries an opportunity to be involved in the implementation of the Programme so as to have a sense of ownership, getting training and a viable movement towards sustainable communities. The programme also em-phasizes the need to use CBOs, NGOs, and Public Entities to maximize community participation. The most important ingredi-ent of this programme is community participation and training. The strategic goal of this programme is to promote and facilitate hands on involvement of beneficiaries in order to inculcate the spirit of ownership.

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Empowering communities to lead RHIP and by so doing creating jobs for the unemployed in the rural areas

Helping municipalities to reduce backlogs

The RHIP is designed to help municipalities to reduce back-logs in sanitation and water supply. It is implemented in sev-en provinces except in Gauteng and Western Cape where there are no rural backlogs in sanitation. The other impor-tant facet of the programme is to alleviate poverty by imple-menting programmes through labour intensive methods.

Since the gazetting of the programme, the National Sanita-tion Programme Unit (NSPU) under the NDHS has secured the services of two Service Providers i.e. the Mvula Trust and the Independent Development Trust (IDT). Sixty per-cent (60%) of the RHIP projects have been awarded to the IDT (with a budget of R52 million) and forty percent (40%) of the RHIP projects have been awarded to Mvula Trust (with a budget of R36 million) in 2010-2011 financial year.

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Progress per province

Region Target Not completed

Completed units with

top structures

Eastern Cape 2 567 1 012 1 555Free State 400 300 100KwaZulu-Natal 3 675 2 094 1 582Limpopo 3 600 2 858 742Mpumalanga 450 15 435Northern Cape 400 8 392North West 828 137 691Total 5 497

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Women are the priority target group for the benefits of RHIP in the rural areas

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RHIP beneficiaries in Limpopo have now built more than 750 toilets and are targeting to built 3 600 by the end of financial year 2011-2012