State dragging feet costs lives
THE nation awoke to the sad news on Thursday that a fiveyear-old was found dead in a broken pit latrine toilet at her school in Bizana.
All Lumka Mkhethwa was hoping to do when she went to the only available toilet at her Luna Junior Primary School was relieve herself.
She was last seen at 1pm just before the school ended at 1.30pm on Wednesday. Little did she know that she would fall into the hole, and spend hours there only for her body to be discovered the following day.
What happened to Lumka on that fateful day could happen to thousands more pupils at 1 900 Eastern Cape schools who are still using unsafe structures to relieve themselves.
NGO Section 27 head of education Faranaaz Veriava told this newspaper on the day that “incidents like these were one reason the country needed proper, binding infrastructure norms and standard”.
The unfortunate incident happens while another NGO, Equal Education (EE), is squaring up against Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga at the Bhisho High Court in an attempt to force the department to fix infrastructure at all schools.
In the legal wrangle, EE wants the court to compel Motshekga to meet the targets the state set itself to fix schools by tightening the relevant law.
EE went to court before Lumka died. The NGO went there because there were other casualties.
Five-year-old Michael Komape also fell into a pit latrine at his Limpopo primary school in January 2014 and died.
Michael had only been at the school as a Grade R pupil for a week when the tragedy struck.
His Grade R teacher who was the first to realise the boy was missing, is now a state witness in a lawsuit filed by the Komapes for their loss of the child at the hands of the school.
Michael’s father James Komape told the media this week that it had been four years since the boy died, but they had yet to even get an apology from Motshekga’s department.
In the department’s very own infrastructure management system’s database published in January this year, the data reveals that there are more than 8 700 pit latrines in schools across the country, and that 1 945 of those are in the Eastern Cape.
Worse off is KwaZulu-Natal with 2 607, and second is Limpopo with 2 524 pit latrine toilets.
These families don’t only deserve apologies, but a commitment from the ministry of basic education to the nation that two deaths in such inhumane conditions, are two too many. The department must deal with this as a priority and set clear time-frames to replace these 8 702 pit latrines with proper structures as soon as possible.
We can’t afford to lose another life like this, not so many years into democracy.