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Losing young lives to drownings in school pit toilets in rural areas must stop, a civil organisation has pleaded.
Equal Education has appealed to National Treasury, ahead of finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech on Wednesday, to ensure no more lives are lost in state school pit latrines.
The organisation wants Treasury to give more funding to the department of basic education to address infrastructure problems at schools, including pit toilets.
Equal Education's call reminded the country of the tragic death of five-year-old Michael Komape who died after falling into a pit toilet at his school in Limpopo in 2014.
In 2018 five-year-old Lumka Mketwa died under the same circumstances at her school in Bizana, Eastern Cape.
Equal Education researcher Jane Borman said about 2,130 schools, mainly in rural areas, were using pit toilets.
According to the national education infrastructure management system 2021 report, Eastern Cape had 944 schools using pit toilets, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 901, Limpopo with 219, Free State with 47 and North West with 18.
“Every day, many pupils across the country face serious difficulties and indignities at school, making it almost impossible to enjoy their constitutional right to a basic education,” Borman said.
TimesLIVE previously reported the education department planned to eradicate pit toilets in schools by the end of the 2022/23 financial year through its Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) programme launched in 2018. According to the department, as of March 31 2021, 1,367 schools were targeted for completion in 2021/22, with the balance of 735 planned for 2022/23.
It was also reported the department would possibly not meet the 2023 deadline.
Overcrowding, deteriorating infrastructure, insufficient teachers and learning resources, Borman said, were other problems faced by government schools.
“The physical state of our schools is a clear indication the system is not functioning as it should. Given these appalling conditions, it is no surprise many pupils struggle with foundational skills such as reading.
“According to publicly available national figures, which are often underreported, most of the 23,276 state schools are without libraries (17,832), lack reliable electricity (3,343) and water (5,836) supplies, or rely on dangerous pit toilets (2,130) as their only form of sanitation,” she said.
Earlier this year basic education minister Angie Motshekga conceded schools had a problem with overcrowding. Motshekga said her department applied to National Treasury for funding to deal with overcrowding.
Borman said the education sector was not given enough money to address problems with infrastructure.
“Over the years, basic education funding has not kept up with inflation, growing pupil enrolment and, more recently, the devastating affect of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has a real affect on the quality of education pupils receive and means less resources and support for each pupil, crumbling and insufficient school infrastructure and insufficient or overworked school staff.”
Borman said to keep the light of learning switched on for pupils, and to prevent further deterioration of the sector, the education department required more funding.
TimesLIVE
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