The DA has vowed to take legal action over school pit latrines following the recent death of four-year-old Langalam Viki.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday at the site where the child was found dead over a week ago, DA leader John Steenhuisen said his party will go ahead with legal action.
He said provincial and national governments will be compelled to ensure that a plan is presented to get rid of pit latrines.
Steenhuisen was also expected to visit the family of the little girl who was laid to rest at the weekend.
Earlier in the day, he told his supporters at the party’s Human Rights Day celebrations that Viki’s tragic death “at the hands of an uncaring ANC government” could have been prevented if the Department of Basic Education had not wasted time in eradicating all pit toilets from schools.
“This Human Rights Day, the DA will remind the ANC national government that proper sanitation is a fundamental human right that government must ensure all South Africans have access to,” Steenhuisen said.
Early in March, Sunday World reported that a panic-stricken mother’s search for her missing child led to an investigation that resulted in the discovery of the four-year-old girl inside a pit toilet.
But it was a sad end to the search, because the child, enrolled at Glen Grey Primary School in Vaalbank, Eastern Cape was found dead.
The child’s body was retrieved by the police’s search and rescue unit.
In December 2021, the South African Human Rights Commission made its intention clear that it planned to drag the government to court over pit toilets.
This after it came to light that more than 3 000 schools had only pit latrines for learners to use. At the time, the commission said the litigation was directed at several provincial education departments over unsafe and unhygienic toilets in schools.
On the list were five provincial education departments – North West, Free State, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal.
In January 2014, Michael Komape, aged five, died after falling into a pit latrine at Mahlodumela Primary School.
According to the commission, the grade R learner’s cause of death was listed as “aspiration of foreign matter”.
Prior to Komape’s death, Lister Magongwa, aged seven, died after the walls of a toilet collapsed on him at Mmushi Primary School in 2013.
Siyamthanda Mtunu and Lumka Mkweta, both from Eastern Cape, fell into and drowned in pit latrines in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Mtunu was aged six while Mkweta was five years old at the time of their deaths.
In September 2021, a three-year-old fell into and drowned in a pit latrine at an unregistered early childhood development centre in KwaZulu-Natal.
Also read: https://sundayworld.co.za/news/mothers-frantic-search-leads-to-dead-childs-body-inside-pit-latrine/
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