Municipalities not making it easy to eradicate pit toilets, Majodina tells MPs
Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina said that pit toilets remained a concern where municipalities were also complicit, but called for a different approach.
Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina. Picture: @DWS_RSA/X
CAPE TOWN - Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina said that municipalities were not making it easy to eradicate pit toilets and kept building more.
Majodina said that whenever people moved to informal settlements in cities and towns, municipalities usually built more pit latrines to try to cater to the numbers.
But Majodina, who tabled her department’s budget on Friday, said that this needed to end in the seventh administration.
Majodina made her maiden address as minister on Friday, tabling a R134 billion budget.
She said that a huge chunk of the budget would go towards infrastructure maintenance and development.
But Majodina said that pit toilets remained a concern where municipalities were also complicit, but called for a different approach.
"At a point, it must be regulated that let’s come up with other innovative ways of sanitation without rolling back the bucket system."
African National Congress (ANC) MP Keamotseng Ramaila claimed they were making progress in eradicating the system but it could still be found in provinces like the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.
"The remaining bucket systems are in the Free State and Northern Cape but the department has planned to eradicate 596 bucket systems this financial year."
Majodina also told Parliament that they would invest in more water resource infrastructure to capture even more water lost through leakages.