Protest against bucket toilets in Angelo looms
Residents of Angelo are threatening to stage a smelly protest if the municipality does not begin work to remove all the bucket toilets in the informal settlement and replace them with a better system.
They want a toilet system that ensures people can answer the call of nature without putting their health at risk – like smart latrines.
Speaking to the Advertiser, community leaders severely criticised local government for forcing the bucket system on the community, despite being told that the communal bucket toilets are not acceptable to residents.
Should the metro fail to remove the current toilets soon, residents intend to take them to Main Reef Road, empty full buckets of excrement on the tarmac and barricade the area in protest.
They describe this system as a legacy of South Africa’s apartheid era in which the poor, predominantly black townships of the big cities went without proper sanitation systems.
“We have been communicating with municipal officials and written a letter to them asking that they remove the bucket, but since then nothing has happened,” said one of the community leaders, David Mabaso.
“They must come and remove these things before residents take matters into their own hands, resulting in ugly incidents,” he said.
Residents have also complained that some of their buckets have not been emptied by the contractors in a couple of months, said Mabaso.
“The bucket system is unhygienic and they get emptied after a long time. When they are full and overflowing, residents are forced to make other means.
“Whenever the contractors come to empty them, the streets get smeared with human excrement, causing the whole area to smell like an open sewer.
“They are just not right – the smell and steam comes to the shacks and this is also affecting the children who play on the streets, causing diarrhoea and many other illnesses,” said Mabaso.
Jerry Masilela, the ward committee member representing the affected area – like many others -admitted that bucket toilets are unhygienic and should no longer exist.
“This system was used during the apartheid era, but a few years after the end of apartheid system in the country, in 1994, South Africans were told that the bucket toilet system would be eradicated, yet our government is still implementing the same system.
“I hope that our leaders will hear our plight then devise a sanitation plan to urgently replace this unwanted system, before incensed residents take their anger to the streets,” said Masilela.
No comment had been received from the metro at the time of going to press. -@FanieFLK
