The Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) initiative aims to replace all basic pit toilets with appropriate sanitation in accordance with the Norms and Standards for school infrastructure.
The Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said that provincial departments identififed 3 898 schools at the start of the SAFE initiative. Motshekga said that there were 2 814 schools on the SAFE programme and that the upgrading of sanitation had been completed at 1 564 schools.
South African schools have faced issues regarding appropriate sanitation facilities for many years and this has sometimes resulted in learners unfortunately losing their lives due to inappropriate sanitation facilities, like pit toilets.
Initial research to solve the issue of inappropriate sanitation was done ten years ago and over the years there has been backlogs in the improvement of school infrastructure which has caused provincial departments to miss the deadline in which schools were no longer supposed to have pit toilets.
Tsukudu Moroeng from the Legal Resources Centre told Newzroom Afrika that missing the deadlines to meet the regulations of the Norms and Standards for school infrastructure means that the learners rights to basic education is being breached.
Advocacy group, Equal Education says it seems that provincial departments are not sure about the progress of the initiative to improve school infrastructure and that budgets allocated to education have further prolonged the process of improving school infrastructure.
The Department said it allocated more than R300 million to eradicating pit toilets in schools over the past three years.
The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces which currently has the most backlogs when it comes to school infrastructure, however the department plans to improve this by the end of the 2022/2023 financial year when they hope to eradicate all pit toilets at schools across the country.
