Pit toilets are bad enough when they are overflowing but when the municipality’s response is to pour water down and give it a stir, this might make you feel really gatvol! Although the municipality has supplied some houses with flushing toilets, there are still a number of homes in Extension 6 that remain without.
Pit toilets are bad enough when they are overflowing but when the municipality’s response is to pour water down and give it a stir, this might make you feel really gatvol! Although the municipality has supplied some houses with flushing toilets, there are still a number of homes in Extension 6 that remain without.
“I don’t know why we have no sewage toilets,” says Ester Kom, one of many residents in the area forced to use pit toilets.
The municipality has yet to provide a sewage system in Extension 6, leaving these residents with only a small upgrade from the bucket toilet system.
However, they have to wait for months on end for the pit toilets to be emptied. Ebenezer Yose wrote to the municipality in April after his toilet was only partially emptied in January 2009, complaining that it was overflowing.
He has since been waiting for a response and for his toilet to be emptied. When residents seek help from the municipal trucks that travel up and down Fani Road past Benjamin Mahlasela School “they [the drivers]tell us to pour water into it and stir it with a stick,” says Nosamkhelo Notyhawa. She is often met with dismissal.
“They say that they don’t have to listen to me because I am a woman.” Notyhawa continues: “They will tell you ‘you are not on our [the driver’s]list.’ And so the toilet remains full.”
Yose demonstrated he removes the waste himself. According to the municipality's instructions, if you pour water into the pit, it softens the waste so you can pile it onto the sides of the pit to make more space.
Yose’s neighbours share the same problem. Their toilets are overflowing and when it rains, they tip over and the contents spill out into the garden.
Residents are concerned with the health issues of dealing with these toilets and don’t like to waste drinking water by pouring it down the toilet.
Notyhawa says she is diabetic and asthmatic, and doing hard manual labour is challenging for her. After phoning the presidential national helpline last year, the municipality came and emptied about a quarter of her pit.
The residents explain that they have to visit Ward 2 councillor and council speaker Rachel Madinda's office to have their pits emptied.
Dolly Teyise of the Ward 2 committee says that the office is open every day from 9am until 4pm but residents complain that often it's not.“We go and report every time, but there is no response,” says Yose.
Nomvulo Wakashe fumes: “Five or six times we go and give them our address. This Monday we reported but they still haven’t come!”
When the Ward 2 office is closed, residents make their way into the town centre and lodge a request at the Department of City Engineers in High Street but to no avail.
They say that the problem is not the Department of City Engineers’ problem as they merely relay the information to the municipality which is where the problem remains untended.
Madinda was alarmed at hearing the news. “Everything that they tell me [the residents], I relay directly to the Dabula Njilo at the Department of City Engineers,” Madinda said. As a last resort, Yose requested for this interview with Grocott’s Mail.
“They [the municipality] say we must not go to the media,” says Yose. But for those living under these conditions, this may be their only hope. At the time of going to print, Grocott’s Mail was still awaiting comment from the municipality.
