ANC MP Winnie Madikizela-Mandela blasts State for country's poor sanitation

Addressing the media yesterday in East London, Eastern Cape, Madikizela-Mandela said: "There are serious shortcomings in the implementation of the sanitation programme. I have personally been shocked at how grave these shortcomings are, especially as they seem to expose our weakness 17 years after 1994."

She was in Eastern Cape as part of a five-day programme to assess the state of sanitation facilities.

The problems include, she said, irregularities and malpractices when projects were being implemented, non-compliance to norms and standards such as the case of open toilets in Free State and Khayelitsha as well as unlawful disposal such as the illegal sale of toilet facilities.

The human settlements department in the province announced yesterday that it had issued letters to 28 companies involved in some of the stalled projects, informing them about the government 's intention to blacklist them .

Madikizela-Mandela said her team would leave no stone "unturned" to improve the plight of victims of poor service delivery.

"We want to assure you that this task team will spare no one. We shall investigate these irregularities and malpractices (which are) hampering the implementation of the programme ..." said Madikizela-Mandela.

Several Eastern Cape townships are still using the bucket system. These include parts of Bedford, Fort Beaufort, Joza in Grahamstown and Chris Hani informal settlement in Uitenhage.

Eastern Cape human settlements head Gaster Sharpley said the shortcomings were largely due to service providers who left incomplete projects.

Sharpley said: "We have given notices to 28 companies informing them about our intention to blacklist them. Seven of them are being finalised ..."

Local government MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane said at the heart of the problem are companies with multi- tasks even though they have no capacity.

"A company would be given a water project this side, a sanitation one on the other side and a road construction project, but would fail (in all three). We will have to strengthen issues of monitoring, and compliance," said Qoboshiyane.

"There is a problem of multi-tasking while the company has no capacity, unsound financial background (and in some cases) no proper checks were done," he added.

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale announced a Madikizela-Mandela-led nine-member task team on September 6, with a mandate to visit municipalities with housing-relatedproblems, and give a full report and recommendations in three months.

This followed media reports just before the May local government elections on open toilets in Western Cape and Free State.

Eastern Cape was the team's first port of call.