Health hazard as toilets not drained for months

Residents of Vusimuzi informal settlement in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, have had to endure using unsanitary and hazardous chemical toilets that have not been drained for five months as the municipality allegedly battles to pay service providers.

Companies that were meant to drain the mobile public toilets say they have not been cleaning them regularly due to payment issues they have with the municipality.

These allegations came up ahead of the state of the city address by mayor Nkosindiphile Xhakaza yesterday. Xhakaza has a vote of no-confidence hanging over his head. His speech showed bold plans for a city that was even battling to manage small projects like cleaning public toilets and patching potholes. 

Sowetan visited Vusimuzi earlier this week and found a community desperate for safe and hygienic bathrooms.     

"These toilets are smelling and are a health hazard especially for women and girls who catch infections [urinary]. We don't want them anymore ... we need proper flushing toilets because these ones were meant to be a temporary measure. That is what we were told when they were introduced in 2016," said a resident who did not want to be identified.

Dona Ramashala, another resident, said the smell and flies have become unbearable. "They must change the contractors because they are not doing a proper job, even their chemicals are not strong enough to keep flies away in these toilets. They also don't drain out everything or never drain at all sometimes. They tell us the municipality has not paid them," said Ramashala.

One of the companies responsible for cleaning the toilets told Sowetan that while it didn't get paid regularly by the municipality, it tries its best to make the toilets usable. 

A cleaning company owner said the past few month have made running his business challenging because of limited cash flow which sometimes forced him to take out loans just to keep the business afloat. He said the municipality is in arrears of seven months.

"Sometimes I use overdrafts to cover the costs. Those loans and interest on overdraft accounts are an unnecessary expense every month which can only be settled once they start paying the old outstanding invoices.

"Imagine the scenario where you invoice R4m a month but the VAT is R650,000 per month. With them being seven months in arrears, we have paid out R4.5m in VAT for work we haven’t been paid for.

"On February 28 we had to pay taxes on huge profits which we haven’t been paid for. Operating costs for this tender is around R400,000 per week. Seven months of not being paid is R12m that we have paid out of accounts, loans and overdraft. You add it all and you get close to R20m that we have had to fund keeping this contract alive," said the company owner. 

Xhakaza, however, told Sowetan yesterday that service providers were not owed a cent. He also said his municipality was looking at other alternatives to solve ablution problems.

"The current programmes or contracts are ending. We have issued invites for new ones but we are also calling for alternative ablution technologies. There are instances where we fall behind with payment of service providers but one particular service provider historically dominates the space and they have their own ways of wanting to enforce payments.

"We are up to date with all the payments and we have done some adjustment and made sure that everyone is paid," said Xhakaza. 

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