Counting down school long drops

Minister sets latest eradication deadline to March.

- Jarryd Westerdale

Eradicating what could be considered a national shame is nearly complete. Countless pupils at thousands of schools in South Africa have suffered through using pit toilets, exposing them to unhygienic and dangerous facilities daily.

Six years after a campaign was started to rid the country of the archaic system, the number of long drops in public schools is now under 250.

Government departments have given themselves multiple deadlines, with Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube setting the latest deadline for next March. Supplying a written response to a parliamentary question, Gwarube's department provided an update on the project to end pit latrines.

The Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) initiative was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa in August 2018.

At the beginning of the Safe project, the department had listed the number of public schools still using pit latrines at 3 898, with the number increasing to 4 707 after further scrutiny.