5.1 Roles and Responsibilities

An important issue for the implementation of the Waste Act and the NWMS is role clarification and the separation of roles. This is important to ensure that there is no role confusion, and that each role is adequately fulfilled by each role player. In the process of compiling the NWMS three distinct roles have been identified, namely policy-making regulation, and service delivery roles. The different spheres of government are responsible for varying combinations of these roles. The research has raised concerns regarding the potential blurring of these roles, and has put forward proposals for the regulatory role, which includes compliance monitoring and enforcement, to retain as much independence as possible. This is particularly important in instances in which the same government department or agency is directly responsible for delivery of waste management services which need to be regulated as part of the overall waste management sector. The application of norms and standards, and the regulation of waste management activities, needs to be applied across both public and private sector providers equitably. Without clear role separation, it will not be possible to ensure unfettered and meaningful regulation of waste management activities, and the successful implementation of the Waste Act is likely to be heavily compromised.

In addition to those three distinct roles, there are issues relating to the vertical division of roles and responsibilities between spheres of government, and the horizontal division of roles and responsibilities between different government departments and agencies. These will be considered in further detail below.