In the pipeline: department has a year to replace pit latrines at 1,549 schools

Implementing agents are racing against the clock to replace pit latrines with proper sanitation facilities at 1,549 schools by the end of March next year.

David van der Westhuijzen, deputy director-general for infrastructure in the department of basic education, told parliament on Tuesday night that the construction of toilets at 1,945 more schools had reached practical completion.

These facilities are being built through the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) initiative which was launched in August 2018 to accelerate the provision of proper toilets in schools.

He said Treasury had recently indicated they would be phasing out the school infrastructure backlogs grant by the end of March next year.

The budget for this grant, which is R2.4bn for this financial year, is used to fund Safe projects as well as those falling under the accelerated schools infrastructure delivery initiative (Asidi).

The ASIDI involves, among other things, the replacement of schools made entirely of inappropriate materials.

“They [Treasury] would like to conclude on all the work funded through the infrastructure backlogs grant. So Safe must be wrapped up the end of this financial year and the remaining scope of the programme must be completed.”

We have had many incidents where there were surprises. I call it a surprise because if you think you are making progress, you will find something in the news about a school in a very poor condition and then find the school was not even on the list.

—  David van der Westhuijzen

The four implementing agents, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), Mvula Trust and Coega Development Corporation are involved in the Safe programme.

Of the 1,117 schools needing appropriate sanitation facilities which have been allocated to the implementing agents, 775 are in Eastern Cape, 199 in KwaZulu-Natal and 143 in Limpopo. Another 432 schools were financed through donors and the education infrastructure grant.

He said there were toilets earmarked for 980 schools that were still in the planning and design phase, which “we must push through the system to practical completion by the end of the financial year”.

The construction of loos for a further 147 schools was out on tender.

There are no pit latrine toilets at schools in Gauteng, the Western Cape, North West, the Free State and Mpumalanga, while the plain pit latrines at five schools in the Northern Cape are no longer in use.

Commenting on the challenges involving school infrastructure, Van der Westhuijzen said one of them was the reliability of planning data.

“We have had many incidents where there were surprises. I call it a surprise because if you think you are making progress, you will find something in the news about a school in a very poor condition and then find the school was not even on the list.”

DA MP Baxolile Nodada questioned why there was a backlog of more than 1,500 schools without proper toilets and asked whether there was a strategy to accelerate their construction.

 “The Safe programme was targeted to have been completed by March 2021. With the slow pace of it happening now, obviously it has implications. Rural schools were the most affected.

“Several deaths have happened and even a teacher sent a child to fetch a cellphone from a pit toilet.”

South Africans were outraged after Michael Komape, 5, from Mahlodumela Primary in Limpopo and Lumka Mkethwa, 5, from Luna Primary in Eastern Cape drowned after falling into pit toilets at their schools in January 2014 and March 2018 respectively.

The chairperson of the basic education portfolio committee, Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba, also questioned the slow pace of infrastructure delivery.

 Van der Westhuijzen said they went out on open tender for every project.

“It’s unfortunately true that the performance of the implementing agents varies a lot. There’s not one answer to say, ‘yes’ implementing agents are terrible to use or excellent to use.”

He said there were several implementing agents they used on some of the Asidi and Safe programmes whose contracts were terminated.

“It is true to do 1,500 schools’ toilets in a year is a massive task. If I go back to the records of Asidi, when Asidi started on the sanitation side they typically did 50 to 100 schools a year.”

But he said they learnt lessons from this and that helped them “ramp up” the programme to about 500 to 700 schools a year. “Last year we achieved more than 1,000 and we eliminated some of the inefficiencies.”