It costs the government R15 000 to install a single toilet at a school in the Western Cape, it has emerged at a stormy meeting of parliament's water affairs portfolio committee.
A senior government official, Schalk Meintjies, said it would be necessary to follow a "complete trail" - from when the decision was taken to install a toilet to when the job was done - to understand why the cost was as high as R15 000.
It would be "very difficult" to follow this trail, Meintjies said.
The disclosures come after President Thabo Mbeki said in his state-of-the-nation address in February that the lack of facilities at rural schools should be given priority.
At the briefing of the water affairs committee on Wednesday, Meintjies, a member of the national sanitation task team and a deputy director of planning in the Department of Education, presented figures on the costs involved in building new schools, including sanitation facilities.
Meintjies said the cost of a new toilet was R15 000, that of putting up a fence around a school R200 000 and that of building a single classroom R100 000.
These figures included procurement and transport costs, he said.
After the disclosure of the cost of installing a toilet, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said government departments were "guilty of extreme bureaucratic bungling".
The DA's spokesperson on sanitation, Graham McIntosh, said after the briefing that "there is no doubt that the department of education inflated its costs to get more money from the finance ministry to balance its books - and this at a time when there is a shortage of schools".
"There is absolutely no way that a single toilet could cost R15 000 - no matter where you go to put that toilet in place," McIntosh said.
"These figures mean (the department of education) is guilty of extreme bureaucratic bungling.
"The government has so much money and it can't spend it all, so it just puffs its figures."
Meintjies said the provincial department of education was responsible for budgeting for toilets at schools, but that the Department of Public Works installed them.
"There are complicated processes by which the cost of a single toilet is calculated," Meintjies said.
"The cost is not the same in every province.
"For instance, it costs R25 000 to install a toilet in the Northern Cape and R15 000 in the Western Cape.
"You would have to follow the complete trail - from when a decision is taken to build a new toilet to when it is done - to understand completely why the cost (of a toilet) is what it is."
Justin Ryan of Concretex, a sanitation firm in the Western Cape, said: "I don't know from which angle (Meintjies) is coming, but a figure of R15 000 for a single toilet seems extremely excessive."
The cost of large-scale installations in a township like Langa was "no more than R1 100 for the total package", Ryan said.
"This number (of R15 000) is ridiculous," he said.
At the briefing by the national sanitation task team, ANC MP Jacobus van Wyk said it was unacceptable that "such a huge backlog in education sanitation" remained a problem in all nine provinces.
Stephen Phohlela (ANC) agreed with McIntosh that a lack of "cohesion" among governmental departments seemed to be at the root of the problem.
"This government often says that delivery of services to the poor is a priority," McIntosh said.
"But this can happen only when departments work together - and not only to ensure that they inflate their budgets with this type of bullshit."