Bucket toilet system still rife in SA

A progress report on the bucket toilet eradication programme tabled before parliament has suggested that the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and the Free State are the provinces with the highest number of bucket toilets, reports OFM.

More than 68 000 dwellings in SA used a bucket toilet in 2016 and 44% of them were located in the Free State, followed by the Eastern Cape (33%) and the Northern Cape (15%).

The report also indicates that the Free State needs millions of rands to eradicate the use of bucket toilets and has been allocated R442 860 000 towards its bucket eradication programme for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

The report on bucket toilets comes just weeks after Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni, during his mid-term budget speech, expressed concerns over inadequate sanitation, particularly at schools around the country, and ordered the basic education department to fast-track means to eradicate pit latrines.

The prevalence of bucket toilets in rural areas and, more particularly, at schools in these areas, came under the spotlight following the death of a Lumka Mkhethwa, five, who fell into a pit latrine at her school in Bizana in the Eastern Cape earlier this year.

The Free State head of the water and sanitation department, Tsediso Ntili, said the eradication of bucket systems in the province was one of the pressing issues they were grappling with and that the provision of adequate sanitation was one of the things on top of their to-do list this year.

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