NATIONAL NEWS - Some of the toilets in Shukushukuma informal settlement in Mfuleni in Cape Town have been broken and blocked for nearly a year, according to a janitor employed to clean them.

Some of the toilets are filled with old excrement. Some have no cisterns or toilet bowls. The City of Cape Town says the condition of the toilets is the result of vandalism.

Ntombozuko Situtumane, who works as a janitor in the informal settlement, said the toilets were last cleaned before July last year.

“We reported the dirty toilets to the City of Cape Town shortly after I started to work as a janitor here in July last year. We can’t fix blocked toilets. We only know how to clean them,” she said.

Said Situtumane: “After we report the toilets, city plumbers come and inspect them, but don’t get round to fixing the problem.”

Her contract expired in January, but the city rehired her in May, she said.

Situtumane said residents who did not have keys to clean toilets had to use buckets.

Resident Kholiseka Masikizi said children squatted between the blocks of toilets to relieve themselves.

“Because toilets bowls are piled high with faeces, you can’t sit on them,” she said.

“Sometimes the toilet pipes burst and dirty, smelly water streams past my shack.”

Jeanette Pane lives with her three children in a shack beside the blocked toilets. She said during the day she walked for about 15 minutes to borrow a key to one of the clean, usable toilets in the settlement from another resident. At night she used a bucket in her shack, with disinfectant to mask the smell.

On hot days flies poured into her shack from the dirty toilets, she said.

Article: Caxton publication, The Citizen.