Delegates worked on a Peoples Plan for Sanitation and Dignity at the recent National Sanitation Summit in Salt River.

The summit attracted delegates from informal settlement organisations and civil society with the aim of developing a plan that will build on and support struggles by South Africa communities, Health-e reported.

Addressing the summit, Social Justice Coalition (SJC) General Secretary Phumeza Mlungwana, said the SJC hopes to finalise the People’s Plan for Sanitation and Dignity in six months. She emphasised that a lack of access to water and sanitation is an insult to human dignity, and alleged that national government is failing to address the issue of accessibility to water and sanitation, GroundUp reported.

SAHRC water and sanitation report

The summit also provided an opportunity to engage with the recently released South African Human Rights Commission’s (SAHRC) Report on the Right to Access Sufficient Water and Decent Sanitation in South Africa: 2014.

The report found that departments and the private sector mainly view water as an economic good or commodity. And that there is a lack of a human-rights-based approach to the delivery of water and sanitation services. The report sees the need for government to evaluate the current models of governance and funding to address failures in governance and budgeting.

Speaking at the summit, SAHRC Deputy Chairperson Pregs Govender said that the government is failing to address the lack of water and sanitation, particularly among poor municipalities. “Poor communities are invisible when compared to the wealthy ones. There are toilets with no lights and they are inaccessible. And the amount of water allocated to them is inadequate,” she said.

The Department of Water Affairs previously slammed the report, calling it outdated, baseless and misleading.