School sanitation – Returning dignity to South African schools

Abstract

The tragic death of Lumka Mketwa, the five-year-old girl who drowned in a pit latrine at an Eastern Cape school on 12 March, has prompted a renewed uproar about the state of school toilets, a little over four years since Michael Komape suffered the same fate a week after starting school in Limpopo. President Cyril Ramaphosa reacted by giving Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, a directive to conduct an urgent audit of unsafe structures at schools – particularly ablution facilities – and come up with a plan to fix them within three months. This had in essence already been done, because the National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) report for January 2018 indicates that 8 702 schools countrywide have pit latrines, which are ‘not allowed at schools’ according to the Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure regulations, published in November 2013.

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