‘I have made this a priority’ – Gwarube to eradicate pit toilets by March 2025

Gwarube

Cape Town — Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, has set a deadline for March 2025 to eradicate all pit toilets at schools in South Africa.

Shortly after her appointment as Minister of Education in July, Gwarube said eradicating pit toilets was one of the key issues she wanted to get rid of, among many others, that have plagued the country’s education sector.

Speaking in the National Assembly on Wednesday, Gwarube fielded questions from MPs and revealed that the department has already gotten rid of more than 4,000 pit toilets in the past few years, and is now hoping to get rid of the final few, which stand at less than 300, EWN reported.

Gwarube set an urgent deadline of just seven months to get rid of the remaining pit toilets in South African schools.

“I have made this a priority of the seventh administration to make sure that we eradicate all pit toilets in particular by the end of this financial year, which ends in March 2025,” she said.

She said that there were currently 259 sanitation projects left to be completed, and the department would conduct audits to determine if any pit toilets were re-erected.

According to TimesLIVE, Gwarube said in 2018, the DBE initiated an audit of unsafe toilets and found 4 700 pit toilets that were not eradicated, which is the backlog the department is currently dealing with.

She said she had made clear that no provinces should be sending money to the Treasury when there were still infrastructure backlogs. She said it was a continuous project.
“Once we have cleared that backlog we have to continuously do an audit to make sure our schools remain safe so that we can see if new pit toilets are erected and we can make sure that those pit toilets have been closed and sealed and that proper sanitation is in our schools,” she said.

Gwarube said the SAFE programme audit had identified 4 000 pit toilets. She said poor workmanship was also a big problem because the department was spending billions on structures that were going to break in a couple of years.

“It does entrench the notion of separate development because this is mostly in the poorest schools and township schools.” she added.

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Compiled by Matthew Petersen

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