Toilet crisis hits dusty Free State
Court dispute stymies efforts to replace bucket system
THE stench is nauseating, the flies maddening and the heat stifling. Pensioner Anna Maduna limps to a battered corrugated-iron outhouse offering scant comfort or privacy in a garden turned to dust by drought on the outskirts of a farming town called Senekal.
Scowling, sweating, she points in disgust at human waste caked in a bucket she is forced to use as a toilet. “We are struggling here,” she says.
She and thousands of infants, children and adults are victims of a crisis of dignity that will cost R1-billion to erase in the Free State. And efforts to eradicate bucket toilets in the province ahead of local government elections have become mired in a contractual dispute.
Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane is to be taken to court on Thursday after her director-general allegedly parachuted a company into a R925-million contract that had already been awarded to somebody else to rid 33 towns of bucket toilets.
Civil servant-turned-businessman Tshegolekae Motaung is bringing an urgent application before the High Court in Bloemfontein to stop the department and Vharanani Properties from building flushing toilets in the towns, which include Senekal.
A fenced-off patch of land next-door to Maduna was being used this week as a storage depot by Vharanani contractors to offload basins, pipes, lavatories and building materials. Staff said some flushing toilets had been installed but were not yet connected to bulk sewerage infrastructure.
To complicate matters, drought has led to severe water shortages in the region. Because there is not enough water available, a secondary school in a town nearby has been forced to lock its flushing toilets and reintroduce bucket toilets on its sports fields.
Bloem Water, a parastatal that provides water services in the province, signed a contract late in 2013 with Motaung’s company, Babereki Consulting Engineers, appointing it as turnkey contractor to replace 34 000 bucket toilets with flushing latrines. The three-year contract involved toilet construction, connection to existing sewerage infrastructure, new sewerage pipelines and pump station upgrades. By SHINY: A resident looks at the new toilets assembled at a depot site set up by Vharanani Properties in Senekal, Free State September 2014, the company had built 12 000 units.
Documents, affidavits, reports and invoices scrutinised by the Sunday Times show that Water and Sanitation DirectorGeneral Margaret-Ann Diedricks signed a second contract in October last year — despite the existing Bloem Water contract — appointing Vharanani as a contractor to build 15 145 flushing toilets in several of the towns serviced by Babereki.
At the same time, payments facilitated by the department for work done by Babereki were reduced to a trickle, financially DEFUNCT: David Motaung, 68, uses the broken pit toilet erected outside his home in Arlington as a storeroom SCANT COMFORT: Anna Maduna is forced to use a bucket toilet, curtained by sheets of corrugated iron, which she built herself in Senekal, in the Free State crippling the firm.
There is no indication as to why the department decided to appoint a second contractor. An invoice seen by the Sunday Times shows that it paid R109million to Vharanani at the end of last year for construction performed in three months.
Last year the public protector started investigating allegations made by a whistleblower about the R925-million contract between Babereki and Bloem Water. The probe continues.
Mokonyane’s spokesman, Mlimandlela Ndamase, said yesterday that the department would defend the action against her in the high court. Vharanani did not comment.
Correspondence seen by the Sunday Times shows Bloem Water acting CEO Mokutu Kgwale wrote to the department on January 27 accusing it of employing “perhaps a deliberate and unreasonable way of delaying payment” to Babereki. Kgwale warned this exposed the government to legal action.
Motaung declined to comment on behalf of Babereki. Bloem Water spokesman Pule Mlambo said payment delays to Babereki were due to ongoing “verification of work done. We don’t know who appointed Vharanani Properties.”
Pensioner David Motaung, 68, whose bucket toilet was replaced by a brick and mortar pit toilet a few years ago, is sceptical about the new toilets.
“They say it will flush but there is not even sewerage infrastructure here,” he said. “They build all these toilets but they don’t work. Somebody is eating our money.”