The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has made a submission identifying problems with the Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) Bucket Eradication Programme to the parliamentary inquiry into the functioning of the department over the last six years.
The inquiry is being run jointly by the Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration. Outa states that in 2003/4, the DWS said it aimed to eradicate 430 000 bucket toilets. By the time the first version of this programme started in 2005, the department had calculated there were 252 254 buckets to be replaced and by late 2009 there were only 7 996 buckets left. However, Outa points out that the programme started again in 2014, with the backlog said to be 273 297 bucket toilets. This month the department told Parliament it had 14 539 left to eradicate.Earlier this year Outa also highlighted the high and varying costs to replace a bucket toilet systems per household. The organisation stated that the DWS’s 2018/19 budget indicates that the department plans to spend about R88 500 to replace each bucket toilet this year. This is based on a budgets R1 048.2 million for the programme with a target of 11 844 bucket systems to be replaced.
In previous years, the DWS’s annual reports show the following spending on replacing bucket toilets:- In 2014/15, the department spent R281.779 million replacing 20 581 buckets, an average cost of R13 691 per toilet.
- In 2015/16, the department spent R975.399 million replacing 1 838 toilets, an average cost of R530 685 per toilet.
- In 2016/17, the department spent R831.390 million replacing 6 978 toilets, an average cost of R119 144 per toilet.
