This is according to the DA media liaison for the Ekurhuleni caucus, Angela Barnes.
“Since its formation in 2000, the council has paid virtually no attention to sanitation in informal settlements and contrary to the mayor’s repeated denials, the Census 2011 figures indicated that the 120 informal settlements have over 100 000 sub-standard toilets which, in more favourable circumstances, as many as 10 families are forced to share.
“Overcome by a sudden sense of urgency, the MMC for Water and Energy, Aubrey Nxumalo, hastily arranged a sanitation workshop this week for ward councillors, after the DA had visited 14 areas in the previous two weeks to examine the shocking state of sanitation in the poorest areas of the East Rand,” says Barnes.
Barnes says that thousands of people living in the East Rand’s informal settlements are faced with challenges such as having to deal with pits that are filling up and having no space to build more.
“Many families in this situation use packets for their human excrement, which are tied up and thrown onto rubbish dumps scattered throughout the area, with consequent huge health hazards and an unbearable pervading stench.
“All of the areas visited by the DA recently, as well as the balance of the metro’s informal settlements, have residents living in varying degrees of squalor and filth as a result of inadequate or non-existent toilet facilities, and running water,” says Barnes.
“The so-called chemical toilets are dirty and very often not replenished by council with chemicals at all.”
She also says that women are faced with the risk of being attacked at night when they walk alone in the dark to use the communal chemical toilets.
“Mothers say they cannot risk letting their children use these facilities unaccompanied, as ghastly as they are, for fear of them being molested,” she adds.
“Despite its limited capacity as opposition, the DA has been doing everything in its power to assist affected communities, and has been researching alternative sanitation for some months.”
The caucus leader, Shelley Loe, says she brought the appalling conditions to the attention of mayor Mondli Gungubele, in almost every single monthly council meeting for the past two years, with no response until this week. “Regardless of the ruling party’s administrative failures, the sanitation workshop showed democracy in action, with the ANC finally reacting to the DA’s determination to make life in informal settlements easier and more dignified for residents,” says Loe.
“Hopefully an action plan will result to bring swift relief to the metro’s informal settlements, and the DA will monitor the situation, and if no radical change is seen by Christmas, the party will take action against the metro.”
