Funding rules mean rural households’ full toilets are being replaced rather than emptied
THE government is spending R8000 a shot to build new ventilated pit latrines for rural households when all that is needed is R700 to empty the pits of existing ones.
The result — at a micro level — is that many rural households now have several toilet structures in their yards, including ones with full pits that need to be emptied.
At a society-wide level the result is equally bad: very slow progress is being made in undoing the backlog of 2,4-million households in the provision of decent sanitation as the toilets that have been built since 1994 steadily fill up and become unusable.
This is the perverse result of an attempt by the government to accelerate the delivery of sanitation by providing more money for it through a R1,2bn rural household infrastructure grant. The terms of the grant — set by the Treasury — are that it can only be used for the construction of new toilets and not to empty the ones that are full.
The emptying of ventilated pit latrines — the pit toilet which conforms to government standards in areas where there is no water-borne sewerage — is the responsibility of municipalities, says Treasury spokesman Jabulani Sikhakhane, which must use their operational budgets to do so.
But Phillip Chauke, the acting head of the national sanitation programme unit in the Department of Human Settlements, says as many as 50% of municipalities are not emptying toilets, especially those in rural parts of the country.
He estimates that half of 2,4-million households that are defined as being part of the backlog already have recently built toilets, but these are full. The life span of a pit latrine is between five and eight years before the pit must be emptied.
"Once a household has got a full toilet, they are by definition without a toilet. There are many, many municipalities that tell me they already have toilets, what they need is help emptying them. Either they don’t have the funds, the equipment or it is not working. But the conditions of the money are that we are not allowed to do that.
"So instead when we see a household in this situation, we are spending (much) more than we should. Most of the existing structures are still very strong. But if the municipalities can’t come and empty the toilet, then we build a new one to give that citizen the service," says Mr Chauke.
The perverse outcome of the rural household infrastructure grant is not the only problem compounding the sanitation backlog.
In 2009, President Jacob Zuma shifted responsibility for the sanitation backlog from co-operative and traditional affairs to human settlements under Tokyo Sexwale.
The transition caused delivery to grind to a halt. Concerned about the "unacceptably slow progress" of the Department of Human Settlements, a report by Parliament’s portfolio committee on human settlements last August showed no progress was made at all in the first year in which the programme fell under Mr Sexwale.
The parliamentary committee expressed alarm again this year when it emerged that at the end of the third quarter of the programme’s second year, only 20% of the funds had been spent.
Apart from the developmental importance of good sanitation, proper toilets have been a constant demand among poor communities and last year emerged as a prominent election issue.
Mr Sexwale responded by establishing a high-profile task team headed by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to investigate the sanitation backlog.
The team has presented an interim report, says Mr Chauke. Mr Sexwale granted it another six months to complete its work.
Mr Chauke, who took over the unit in August with a large spending backlog, says delivery has accelerated significantly but the programme is likely to end the fourth quarter with about R80m — or 30% of its budget — unspent.
A report prepared for the South African Human Rights Commission, which is also holding hearings on sanitation, last month made the "startling finding" that "although access to sanitation is increasing", up to 28% of households are at risk of service failure or are experiencing service delivery failure.
No comments:
Post a Comment