Limpopo’s Education Department says it has eradicated pit latrines in nearly 500 schools across the province.
On Thursday, MEC Mavhungu Lerule-Ramakhanya tabled the departmental budget in the Lebowakgomo legislature.
The rights organisation, Section 27 had taken the department to court after a teen learner, Michael Komape, fell and died in a pit toilet in 2014.
Initial reports by the Limpopo Department of Education were that it was lagging behind towards the complete eradication of pit latrines at rural schools.
The department had earlier indicated in February this year, that just above 200 schools’ infrastructure projects were ongoing. This is out of 500 schools, initially listed as not having safe toilets.
However, a month later, the department confidently announced that it is nearing the completion of eradicating pit toilets at schools.
Lerule-Ramakhanya, who presented the R38 billion departmental budget, states that they are almost finished, with 99% of the work to replace pit toilets.
“Currently as I read the budget, I have indicated that we are already 99% to eliminating pit latrines in the province, out of the 519 pit latrine schools, 497 are done, our own targets as a province we put ourselves a year before millennium deadlines and that is why there are no contradictions on 2029,” says Lerule-Ramakhanya.
Lerule-Ramakhanya says although the national deadline towards eradicating toilets has been set for 2029, the province remains on track.
“As you have asked me about the five hundred and nineteen pit latrines and i indicated that four ninety-seven are already done that means we are on ninety-nine percent and we are almost done with our own deadline as Limpopo,” Lerule-Ramakhanya explains.
However, Democratic Alliance’s caucus leader Jacques Smalle has accused the MEC of misrepresenting the statistics on pit latrines.
“I think the MEC’s numbers are incorrect I think what the MEC is focusing on is the 137 schools with infrastructure concerns of sanitation that are totally unsafe for children to use and that is the key focus, we are not going to eradicate pit latrines in the first quarter, so that means come the first of June there will not be pit latrines in the province, I think she is misleading the people of Limpopo,” Smalle explains.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)’s provincial chairperson Tshilidzi Maraga says the MEC’s announcement regarding the near completion of sanitation projects at schools, as well as the eradication of pit toilets soon, is false.
“She should have indicated how many are done and how many are left so we know them this is their way of using this thing of robbing people of Limpopo to say we are done, but as the EFF we can assure you that is not true. The pit toilets are not allowed. That is why as the MEC was speaking we realised what she was saying was totally unacceptable,” Maraga elaborates.
About 1000 schools, especially in provinces such as Limpopo, Kwa Zulu Natal and the Eastern Cape are still lacking proper infrastructure. This in turn derailed efforts to eradicate pit latrines, and to provide proper sanitation infrastructure and clean running water.
In the meantime, Section 27 has launched the Michael Komape Sanitation Progress Monitor accountability tool in the eradication of pit toilets. It’s named after the five-year-old learner, who drowned in a school pit latrine in Limpopo in 2014.
