Plumbing Africa January 2020 | Page 9

NEWS 7 New fundraising campaign for WASSUP The team at WASSUP Diepsloot is launching a creative new fundraising campaign to support the ongoing repair and maintenance of communal toilets, taps and drains across Diepsloot Extension 1, called #AdoptAToilet. Since 2007 the WASSUP (Water Amenities Sanitation Services Upgrading Programme) team of community plumbers have worked to repair and maintain communal toilets, taps and drains in Extension 1 of the Diepsloot township. This programme brings working toilets to residents, trains residents as community plumbers and generally provides some dignity to people using toilets. Through ongoing monitoring, the project has demonstrated enormous water savings and is proven as a workable and scalable programme for human settlements. Research has proven that repairing and maintaining one toilet saves 4 000 litres of water per day. Under this international initiative USD100 “makes you a #ProudToiletParent for 1 toilet for 1 year, provides working ablutions for 39 households, saving 1.4 million litres of water”. In turn, the IWSH Foundation launched from 3 December a Facebook Fundraiser for #GivingTuesday for #AdoptAToilet, while giving the campaign further promotion through its various print and online channels in its role of ‘international partner’ – based on IWSH’s Community Plumbing Challenge collaboration of a few years ago. Plumbers busy assisting WASSUP on this year’s Mandela Day. WASSUP has established solid partnerships and colleagues who support their work with materials and networks, however the team still needs cash, so we welcome you to our new adopt-a-toilet campaign. Adopting a toilet has the double benefit of not only providing good sanitation systems to local residents, it also contributes towards saving water, a precious resource. You can find out more about the campaign at: http://stickysituations.org/wassup.diepsloot.html PA IOPSA contribution to Construction Sector Charter Council The Construction Sector Charter Council (CSCC) is an executive authority responsible for the overseeing and monitoring of the implementation of the Construction Sector Codes (CSC) of Good Practice, which is the legal and mandatory empowerment measurement tool for the construction industry. The CSCC was created as a result of the gazetting of the Construction Sector Codes (CSC) on the 5th of June 2009 by the Minister of Trade and Industry in terms of Section 9 (1) of the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act 53 0f 2003 (The B-BBEE Act) before it was amended by the B-BBEE amendment act of 2013. The aim of the Charter Council is to monitor adherence to transformation targets. January 2020 Volume 25 I Number 11 In the original Charters, the Department of Trade and Industry excluded ‘trades’ from its definition of professionals. IOPSA has made presentations to the Charter Council that this should be changed so that a plumber, for instance, is included as a professional. This has become even more relevant since the initial transformation policy was devised, as it now has the Plumbing Industry Registration Body, the professional organisation of the plumbing industry which maintains the professionalism of the industry and ensures all qualified plumbers keep up-to-date with professional changes. This was a blind-spot by the DTI authors of the B-BBEE Amended Codes of Good Practice, the policy on transformation. The last amendments were done in December 2017. They get reviewed every few years and the understanding is that they will again be reviewed in 2020. IOPSA is consequently making recommendations that the plumbing profession fall within the scope of the next generation of B-BBEE regulations sector codes. PA www.plumbingafrica.co.za