Swift action on toilets needed

IN response to the letter, “Pit toilet stats available” (March 26), I agree that if schools correctly completed the annual return for the education management information system (EMIS), the information would be readily available for the Department of Education to access and act on.

It is unfortunate that schools in our province do not always supply all the necessary crucial information.

However, the department in the Eastern Cape has a responsibility to monitor and evaluate conditions of schools.

If the department was effectively run, this information would be available at the click of a button.

It is not as if sanitation, sufficient water and pit toilets is a new issue to the department.

Based on numbers supplied by Education MEC Mandla Makupula, in response to various oral and written legislature questions, it seems that we have a growing problem, even though many schools are being rationalised and merged.

In 2014, 765 schools in the province did not have access to adequate water and sanitation; in 2016, an estimate of 3 000 schools did not have adequate water and sanitation; last year, 2 491 schools were said to have inadequate sanitation and this year, 3 088 schools have insufficient sanitation.

We still have 810 schools in the province with pit latrines.

This excludes the existing 3 088 schools with insufficient sanitation facilities.

I brought the matter of insufficient sanitation, including pit toilets, to the attention of the Human Rights Commission in 2013.

The need for further investigation of a problem that has been evident and of a colossal concern for a decade, if not more, shows the substantial cracks in an already crumbling department.

If the action from the president and the minister is swift and sincere, we might still see the end of this ongoing problem.

Edmund van Vuuren, MPL, DA shadow MEC for education, Bhisho