GOVERNMENT’S DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS MID-TERM REVIEW- INDICATORS? WHAT INDICATORS?
Introduction
Yesterday, InsidePolitics highlighted that Government’s Development Indicators Mid-Term Review , that was released in June this year, revealed not only that it has failed when it comes to service delivery and providing basic opportunities but also that there were a number of inconsistencies when it comes to the indicators contained in the review.
In order to demonstrate both these problems, four indicators included in the review will be studied in greater detail below: the provision of water, sanitation, housing and education.
While the provision of water, sanitation and housing can be classified as services vital to all South Africans, access to education gives an idea of how Government is performing when it comes to providing people with basic opportunities.
Service delivery indicators
access to sanitation
Government set as one of its goals that South Africans are to have access to a functioning basic sanitation facility by 2010.
Firstly, the review reveals that while access to basic sanitation has increased from 50% in 1994 to 71% in 2006; the backlog still remains at 3.7 million. Secondly, it divulges that Government supplied a mere 1.3 million households with sanitation between 2003 and 2006; thus supplying a further 3.7 million households before 2010 seems implausible.
This failure by Government becomes more apparent when one refers to the recently released 2006 United Nations Human Development Report. The UN report provides data on a number of human development indicators for 177 countries including South Africa.
While the figures for 2004 were substantially similar in both reports, the UN report noted that 69% of South Africans had access to sanitation in 1990. However, according to Government, 49.9% had access by 1994.
It is highly unlikely that between 1990 and 1994; 20% of people lost access to basic sanitation. This inconsistency between the reports undermines the credibility of Government’s data, especially when one notes that it was supplied by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.
access to water
Government also promised that all South Africans are to have access to potable water by 2008.
The review reveals in 2006, 15.3% of South Africans still have no access to water and that it took twelve years to raise the percentage of those who have access from 61.7% to 84.7% (by 23%); in other words it is fairly unlikely that providing access to all will be reached by 2008.
More interestingly, the United Nations report reveals that in 2004; 12 % of the population did not have access to a water source. Government’s figure for the same year is 8%.
A 4% difference appears fairly insignificant; but when converted into an actual number taking into account there were 45.2 million South Africans in 2004, the UN report then reveals that 5.4 million people did not have access to water while Government’s figure is R3.6 million; a considerable difference of 1.8 million people.
access to housing
Government’s mid-term review is fairly abstract regarding its goal for the delivery of houses. The report states that Government aims “to meet housing needs”; making no mention of how many houses would have to be built in order to achieve this aim.
While the review reveals that from 1996 to March 2006 2.3 million houses were built, the fact that since 2002 the percentage of people not living in formal dwellings increased from 12.7% to 15.9% clearly shows that Government is obviously failing to achieve the above goal.
The review also shows a large discrepancy between housing units that are planned and those that are actually completed. While the review ar
| Posted on 26/9/2007
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