Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille says the city will spend almost R1bn to improve services in informal settlements.
|||Cape Town - While the City of Cape Town will spend almost R1 billion on toilets, electricity and water services for informal settlements this year, political resistance and the ongoing “poo protests”, as well as physical and legal constraints, prevent the council from meeting all its service delivery targets in more than 80 percent of these areas.
Mayor Patricia de Lille said the city had increased its budget over the past six years to meet the needs of informal settlements where it could. This year it had allocated a combined amount of R954 million for the provision of electricity, water and sanitation, and solid waste management to these areas. Of this, R14.3m would be used to install an additional 1 300 full flush toilets across the city.
But despite this massive investment in basic services, about 82 percent of the city’s informal settlements could not be fully serviced because they were either on privately-owned land or their location was not suitable for permanent infrastructure.
Speaking at a media briefing to highlight the city’s investment in informal settlements, De Lille said it was impossible to install full flush toilets in high-density informal areas, under power lines, on landfill sites, in a road or railway buffer, on flood plains, in water bodies or retention ponds or outside the urban edge.
Joe Slovo North in Milnerton, for example, was on private land and under power lines, and therefore not suitable for flush toilet infrastructure. The 15 000 dwellings in Vukuzenzele, Europe, Kanana and Barcelona were on an old landfill site.
But despite these obstacles, the city would continue to offer some form of sanitation service, either chemical or container toilet or a portable flush toilet, she said
The portable flush toilets - or portaloos - have taken centre stage in what De Lille described as “organised political resistance” to the DA-led city’s service delivery plans. Two ANC members have been involved in the dumping of faeces at the Western Cape provincial legislature and Cape Town International Airport, while protesters regularly disrupt traffic on key access routes by throwing buckets of human waste.
“It has become increasingly clear that it is only in those communities where there is organised political resistance that portable flush toilets are not accepted. The city is providing this sanitation type on a voluntary basis. The evidence is overwhelming that they are accepted by communities. I would like to call on all political parties to desist from unnecessarily politicising this issue, in the interests of service delivery, not political point scoring.”
De Lille was at pains to emphasise that portable flush toilets were not bucket toilets, but a sealed water-based fully flushable alternative.
“These toilets are cleaned free of charge three times a week by a city contractor and are not bucket toilets.”
About 700 Capetonians still use the bucket system in areas including Boys Town, KTC and France.
City staff have been threatened, attacked and intimidated when trying to service toilets in some areas.
Mayoral committee member for utility services Ernest Sonnenberg said law enforcement officers had to escort cleaners into four no-go areas where they were at risk of being attacked, including in Kanana and Barcelona. Although this number had dwindled in the 16 danger zones identified two months ago when the poo protests started, the city was still having to protect staff trying to clean toilets in these areas.
JP Smith, mayoral committee member for safety and security, said later that a third of the city’s law enforcement staff were being deployed to deal with poo protesters on the N2 and other parts of the city.
But despite the challenges, De Lille said the city had increased the number of toilets in informal settlements from 14 591 to 40 296 since 2006. The city was also close to reaching its self-imposed target of providing some type of sanitation for every five households. Only 19 000 households across the city did not fall within this 1:5 ratio, said De Lille.
Efforts were being made to address this shortfall. The city would continue to provide full flush facilities when possible, or would offer alternatives such as the portable flush toilets.
More than 7 000 portable flush toilets have been distributed since April, adding to the 10 000 units already in use.
De Lille listed key projects that would improve basic services for informal dwellers.
These included 7 715 new electricity connections in its supply areas and 8 000 in Eskom supply area households. The city would open its solid waste drop on weekends to improve cleaning services in informal settlements.
An additional 1 300 full flush toilets would be available to residents in areas such as Imizamo Yethu, Masiphumelele and Enkanini.
The janitorial service, introduced in Khayelitsha, would be extended to other informal settlements.
De Lille said that despite these projects, the city was “trying to find a balance with a moving target” as the city’s population increased and the need for services intensified.
anel.lewis@inl.co.za
Cape Argus