A damning and long-awaited report into sanitation has been
quietly published on the human settlement department's website.
The report reveals that many municipalities will not meet
their millennium development goal of halving the lack of access to sanitation
and proposes an overhaul of the whole sanitation structure.
The Malpractices in Sanitation Delivery report was compiled
over the course of last year by the ministerial sanitation task team
established by Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale. It was prompted by the
open-toilet saga in the Western Cape and Free State and was chaired by Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela.
Though completed in September 2012 and presented to the
parliamentary portfolio committee on human settlements, it was not released
publicly and human settlements did not respond to questions. The Social Justice Coalition, a nongovernmental organisation working in Khayelitsha, was even
planning to lodge a Promotion of Access to Information request to get hold of
it.
Then it appeared on the department’s website, riddled with
spelling mistakes, with a link that appears not to work properly.
Gavin Silber, the head of the coalition, said it was
problematic that the report was finalised in September, but released only now.
“The deadline for its recommendations is June, so there doesn’t seem to be time
for consultation,” he said. But its nearly 500 pages offer comprehensive
criticism of the current state of sanitation.
In her introduction, Madikizela-Mandela warned: “I can
unequivocally state that we have a serious problem that threatens to have a
negative impact not only on the health of this nation, but on the very
democratic culture we aspire to build.” This is evident in the continuing
complaints about lack of service delivery.
“Communities have spoken loudly and
persuasively about the lack of proper sanitation,” she said.
Sanitation portfolio
The goal of her team was to help the government’s national
sanitation programme by examining where it was going wrong or right. To do
this, it visited 48 municipalities in all nine provinces.
The biggest problem,
the report found, was the scattering of the sanitation portfolio between
spheres of government. Initially under water affairs, its legislation dealt
mainly with water. But it then was moved to human settlements. Local
government, co-operative governance, health and education are also involved.
“In most instances, legislation relating to the
implementation and provision of sanitation is scattered throughout government
departments with no central co-ordination,” it said.
Silber agrees with this. “There is wide acknowledgement that
sanitation has not been properly co-ordinated since it was passed from water
affairs to human settlements in 2009. Responsibility has been passed back and
forth like a hot potato.”
A report by the Human Rights Commission early last year,
sparked by the same open-toilet scandal, discovered the same problem. It
motivated for sanitation to be returned to water affairs.
The lack of national guidance has left development to local
government. And with sanitation not being a money-earner – unlike water, for
which money can be charged after the basic free allocation – it tends to be
neglected. The main infrastructure funding for municipalities, the municipal
infrastructure grant, goes into other programmes and there is no money for
toilets to be built or maintained, the report said.
Given this state of affairs, it concluded that many
municipalities would not meet their millennium development goal for sanitation.
But it did admit some progress.
Five million households did not have access to sanitation in
1994 and the number is now about 2.4-million nationally. However, this number
includes households that have a toilet that might not be working.
The task team is calling for the creation of a single body
to run sanitation under human settlements. This would take over the duties and
funding of all other departments.
“The creation of a national sanitation agency
will provide leadership,” it said.
Communities would then be included in their own development, which is
not happening now.
Public-private partnerships must be reinforced and a special
sanitation fund created to respond to community requests for assistance. The
department did not respond in time to questions about the release of the
report.
Sourced from Mail and Guardian - South Africa
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