The municipality may have a plan to address the plight of township residents who are still living with the bucket toilet system eight months after they were promised flushing toilets, but residents of the Mission area of Fingo say they are sick of what they see as empty promises and that the municipality has let them down.
The municipality may have a plan to address the plight of township residents who are still living with the bucket toilet system eight months after they were promised flushing toilets, but residents of the Mission area of Fingo say they are sick of what they see as empty promises and that the municipality has let them down.
"We have really had enough of this. This project was supposed to be finished within a month – and that was in February. We have a big family – but the bucket collectors come only once a week and they do not even take the second bucket that we use when the other one is full. Even the dogs end up eating out of these buckets because they don't take them," an emotional Mission resident told Grocott's Mail on Friday.
Chairperson of the Mission street committee, Nombali Ogqoyi, said despite the municipality's fanfare more than eight months ago, residents continued to endure the unhealthy bucket system, which she feared could have serious consequences for their children's health. "Some of us have big families. If you are lucky, you get a second bucket – but the bucket collectors just take the one that is inside and leave the second one outside," Ogqoyi said.
While toilet structures have been built in the area, the plumbing remains unfinished. Children played in the toilet structures, while Ogqoyi explained that residents were caught in the centre of a payment dispute between the contractor and the municipality.
The project started in February and residents were promised it would be completed within a month. Some people were told to move out of their houses, because the sewerage pipes run across their homes, Ogqoyi said.
The plight of those still living with the bucket system has attracted the attention of community activists. Unemployment People's Movement (UPM) spokesman Ayanda Kota said many people in different areas were affected. "It's a sad situation," Kota said.
In October last year, Kota led a protest by activist groups and community members against the bucket system, discarding human waste in the main entrance of the City Hall.
Lovey Mpolweni was one of those moved from their homes to make way for the new infrastructure. She had to build a smaller shack and said she'd received no assistance from the municipality.
"Even if you go to the fire department to ask for [plastic sheeting]to put over the roof they tell you that they don't have any, Mpolweni said. She said the past few weeks had been particularly hard on her and her family because of the heavy rains and that sometimes they waited as long as two weeks for their buckets to be collected.
In response to questions from Grocott's Mail, municipal spokesman Mncedisi Boma admitted that the contractor's deadline had long expired. But the contractor found a big rock underground and this ended up delaying the project, Boma said.
He said the municipality had a plan to address the problem, however. "We have divided the project into two phases. Once phase one is done we will issue another tender for a different contractor to finish the next phase," he said.
Boma said the contractor had not detected the rock before they started working on the site and this had resulted in delays to the project. He said Council had discussed this matter on Friday and that he would embark on a fact-finding exercise to establish exactly how many families were affected, and whether they needed assistance.
