PHUTI MOSOMANE
EQUAL Education (EE) learner members will march to the Limpopo Department of Education (LDoE) offices in Polokwane today (Tuesday) to demand urgent sanitation relief for all “priority one” schools.
Priority one schools are schools with “illegal plain pit toilets as their only form of sanitation”.
Plain pit toilets were banned from schools with the introduction of the Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (the school infrastructure law) in 2013, and had to be removed and replaced by 2016″.
It has been 10 years since the introduction of the school infrastructure law, and all of the sanitation delivery deadlines (2016 and 2020) have been missed, the organisers said.
Based on plans the LDoE submitted to the court in 2021 priority one schools should have received sanitation upgrades by March 2023.
“This deadline has also been missed. It is urgent that the LDoE provide these schools with adequate, proper, and safe toilet facilities to meet the necessary hygiene and safety standards for a conducive learning environment,” Equal Education said.
“As long as these illegal pit toilets exist in schools, children’s rights will continue to be violated. We cannot and will not sit back while the LDoE continuously fails to meet the deadlines for school sanitation upgrades,” it added.
Equal Education organiser Tiny Lebelo told Inside Education that the government has a constitutional obligation to provide schools that are safe and ensure that they are conducive for learning.
“The importance of this march is that there is a constant neglect especially from provinces where they are largely rural.”
“We cannot have a school that was built in the 70’s by the community still standing now without proper sanitation upgrades nor infrastructural upgrades. We cannot go another day with another primary school having pit latrines as their form of sanitation without government intervention,” she said, adding that it seems the government has “no political will to eradicate pit latrines in schools but we cannot constantly wait for the private sector to be the saviour.”
She said the march will be used as an important reminder to the department of education of its constitutional obligation.
“Meeting the department outside their offices on the streets where the problems are, and not in their boardrooms or in press briefings is an important highlight of Tuesday’s march. We are meeting at the frontlines where the real struggle for the restoration of the dignity of the black child is,” she added.
EE members in Limpopo will be marching to the LDoE offices in Polokwane to demand:
Urgent sanitation relief for priority one schools such as Tutwana Primary School and Seipone Secondary School Immediate provision of mobile toilets to these schools as a short-term interim intervention based on their implementation plan, while the department works swiftly in providing permanent proper toilets, and,
Urgent sanitation relief for priority one schools such as Tutwana Primary School and Seipone
Secondary School.
The march takes place on Tuesday, 11 April 2023 at 9 am.
INSIDE EDUCATION
