The water board serving South Africa’s second most-populous province said it needs at least 200 billion rand ($14.9 billion) to address a service backlog, almost double the country’s total budget for water and sanitation for the three years through 2019.
“The real headache is where the funds are going to come from,” Shami Harichunder, a spokesman for KwaZulu-Natal province’s Umgeni Water, said by phone Thursday. The board services metropolitan areas including Durban, the country’s largest after Johannesburg and Cape Town.