According to a progress report on the bucket eradication programme tabled before Parliament, the Northern Cape and the Free State are among the provinces with a high number of bucket toilets. 

The report indicates that over 68 000 consumer units in South Africa used a bucket toilet in 2016 and 44% of them were located in the Free State, followed by the Eastern Cape at 33% and the Northern Cape at 15%. The report also indicates that the Free State needs millions to eradicate the use of bucket toilets and has been allocated approximately R442 860 000 towards its bucket eradication programme for the 2018/19 fiscal year.

The report on bucket toilets comes just weeks after the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, during his mid-term budget speech expressed concerns over inadequate sanitation, particularly at schools around the country, and ordered the Basic Education Department to fast-track means to eradicate pit latrines at affected schools.

The plight of bucket toilets in rural areas, and more particularly at schools in these areas, came in the spotlight following the death of a five-year-old, Lumka Mkhethwa, who fell into a pit latrine at her school in Bizana in the Eastern Cape, earlier this year.

OFM News previously reported that the Free State Head of the Water and Sanitation Department, Tsediso Ntili, confirmed the eradication of bucket systems in the province was among some of the pressing issues they are grappling with and that the provision of adequate sanitation in rural areas was one of the things on top of their to-do list this year. This was after the Statistician-General’s release of the 2017 Non-financial Census of Municipalities (MFCM), which indicated that the number of households using bucket toilets has increased by over 1 700 from the year 2016 to 2017 in Setsoto and close to 800 in Mangaung.

OFM News