17 August 2026 – Consulting Engineers South Africa’s (CESA) has welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s release of the National Water Action Plan (NWAP), but is cautioning that infrastructure investment and institutional reform will only deliver results if South Africa urgently closes the technical skills gap in its water and wastewater sector.

CESA is calling on national and provincial government, municipalities, water boards and private sector partners implementing the NWAP to incorporate structured, ongoing technical training into all phases of the Plan’s rollout, from the immediate stabilisation of failing systems to the long-term institutional reforms National Water Crisis Committee (WATERCOM)  has been mandated to drive.

The NWAP, released on 23 July 2026 following a meeting of WATERCOM at the Union Buildings, sets out a programme of short-, medium- and long-term interventions to address the country’s escalating water crisis. It identifies an inappropriate delivery model, including the absence of ring-fenced water revenues and diffused accountability between billing, revenue collection and technical departments, as the root causes of failing services in many municipalities.

“The plan has correctly diagnosed the institutional and financial failures behind the crisis, but no amount of ring-fencing or reform will hold water if there aren’t enough competent people to run the plants, maintain the assets and make sound engineering decisions on the ground,” states CESA CEO Chris Campbell.

Click here to download the full press release in a Word document format.