Gwarube announces 96% of identified pit toilets have been eradicated

The organisation has undertaken verification exercises telephonically and via site visits to determine the reality on the ground. 

“What we found has been a mixed bag of results. We have seen some beautiful facilities at schools where sanitation has been addressed properly. However, we have also seen schools where construction has started but is not yet completed. We have seen schools where construction hasn’t even begun.

“We have also seen very serious problems with schools where construction is not completed but have received mobile toilets, and there has been insufficient provision of mobile toilets,” she said. 

Petherbridge said they recognised the minister was completing a backlog from an audit in 2018. She said they welcomed the undertaking but recognised the problem of working with outdated data, “especially what we have seen on the ground in Limpopo”.

“When Limpopo department of education brought out its first plan it told us, for example, about 280 schools were priority 1 schools. After a number of years of verification that number has now jumped to 564, which tells us that auditing and updating of numbers is not done as properly and accurately as it should be,” she said.

She added that when the minister was talking about the 2018 data, they were concerned that this did not include hundreds of schools across the country that might have fallen under the radar.

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