Since 2006, substantial progress has been made to implement sanitation systems for residents in informal settlements.
According to national government metrics, the City of Cape Town has achieved 100% access to adequate sanitation, compared with the national average of 43%.
Last Sunday's World Toilet Day gave us the opportunity to reflect on this success and to reaffirm the City’s commitment to increased service delivery.
Since 2006, the City of Cape Town has increased the ratio of toilets to households from 1:9.6 to 1:4.6 despite the pressures brought on as a result of population increase.
The City tries, as far as possible, to install full-flush toilets, and this is echoed by the proportion of full-flush toilets also increasing from 15% to just over 30% of total toilet provision.
Furthermore, on an aggregate level, approximately 13% of informal settlement households no longer have to share a toilet with other households.
To put this in perspective, at the time of the 2006 municipal elections, more than 10 years after apartheid ended, only 15 000 toilets had been provided to informal settlements in the city.
Of these, approximately 3 000 were bucket toilets and only 2 500 of the total toilets provided were connected to the sewerage system.
Furthermore, the City has pioneered the rollout of portable flush toilets (PFTs). These toilets can be kept in the home and store waste in a sealed container which is serviced three times a week.
The main advantage of these toilets is safety. Residents who feel unsafe using communal toilets at night will no longer have to do so if they request one of these toilets. In total, 20 000 PFTs are currently in use, and are available upon request to residents in informal settlements.
The City of Cape Town was also the first municipality in the country to provide a janitorial service to clean the toilets in informal settlements.
This programme has seen the creation of thousands of job opportunities through the Expanded Public Works Programme. These janitors also monitor infrastructure and inform the depots where maintenance is required.
However, there is still room for improvement. The City knows that many residents still live in unforgiving conditions, but we have reached a point where either extreme density in informal settlements and a lack of available land is often challenging further service delivery efforts.
In most cases, the layout of informal settlements needs to be adjusted before additional toilets and other basic services can be provided. This is being achieved via the City’s reblocking and super-blocking programmes, relocations and larger interventions such as the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme.
For significant future improvements to toilet provision in informal settlements to happen, however, co-operation between the City and residents must be enhanced.
Certain communities hold the belief that if they block the rollout of alternative sanitation such as chemical toilets or portable flush toilets, or reject the City’s attempts to restructure the settlement so that extra services can be provided, they can strong-arm the City into offering them full-flush toilets (the preferred option) or speed up a housing opportunity.
The City would like to assure these residents that alternative sanitation is provided only where necessary. Chemical toilets are less preferred by most residents but are also more expensive than flush toilets, so we want to minimise how much we rely on them.
The City’s Organisational Development and Transformation Plan identifies addressing the realities of urbanisation in a time of economic austerity as a key challenge for the City, but also highlights the importance of resource efficiency and security.
This is especially relevant now that we are experiencing the worst drought in recorded history. With this in mind, the City is committed to exploring less water-intensive sanitation options in the formal and informal sectors.
We call on communities to please partner with us in this process. We understand that there is a perception among many residents that toilets other than full-flush toilets deny them dignity, but we cannot be closed-minded about this.
Our track record when it comes to providing sanitation services is unparalleled, and we hope that this give us enough credibility to facilitate open and constructive discussion on the challenges we face as a city, and what compromises are necessary to adapt to our new normal.
In addition, vandalism of toilets remains a huge challenge. Fixing infrastructure which has been vandalised consistently draws resources away from where they can be better used, for instance to develop new infrastructure.
As such, we would like to renew our call for residents to ensure toilets are looked after, and only used for disposal of human waste and toilet paper.
Flushing of general litter such as paper and food causes blockages and overflows, which creates a health risk. While the City has the janitorial programme and depots who are dedicated to maintenance of full-flush toilets and taps in informal settlements, we need residents to take better ownership of the infrastructure, especially at this time of severe drought.
Limberg is mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and waste services, and
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