Amnesty International
Amnesty International South Africa has called on the Department of Basic Education to urgently act on its commitment to prioritise replacing all pit toilets in schools by 2023 with concrete actions.
The organisation said that it launched its "pit toilet tracker" on Tuesday, to monitor how many schools in the country are still being subjected to inadequate ablution and sanitation.
According to available data, the Eastern Cape has 1 473 schools still using pit-toilets, with the number of pit latrines in Limpopo Province, standing at 2 144.
"The DBE has been repeatedly moving the deadline when it comes to eradicating pit toilets and ensuring that all schools have proper and safe sanitation facilities, and in so doing continuing to fail learners," Amnesty International South Africa's Executive Director Shenilla Mohamed said.
She said these illegal pit toilets are not only violating the right to sanitation which is enshrined in the Constitution, but also the right to health, education, dignity, privacy whilst in some cases posing a serious risk to the right to life."
Mohamed said according to the 2013 Minimum Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure, all schools should be provided with sanitation by 29 November 2016, and be brought into compliance with the Norms and Standards by 29 November 2020.
"However, instead of meeting these targets the Department has repeatedly revised these deadlines saying initially that it planned to eradicate pit toilets by March 2022, only to tell the Polokwane High Court last year that in provinces like Limpopo this can only be achieved by 2030, more than a decade later than the original timeline," she said.
Amnesty International said current government data shows that South Africa still has 5 167 schools that do not have proper ablution facilities and still use pit toilets.
Mohamed said the organisation is also calling on people to continue signing a petition started in 2020 which has already more than 20,000 signatures demanding the DBE eradicate pit toilets in schools across South Africa.
