This is according to the Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Department. Responding to a parliamentary question on the challenges faced by informal settlement dwellers amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Minister Lindiwe Sisulu says her department is working with provincial departments and various municipalities to ensure there is water provision and where persons share ablution facilities, there is mass sanitisation disinfection. Her statement comes months after OFM News reported on how the Free State, alongside the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, is still in much need of water and sanitation infrastructure.

A report tabled before the Water and Sanitation Portfolio Committee in July indicated that these provinces need urgent intervention. It highlighted that while water supply is a great challenge in Free State municipalities such as Maluti-A-Phofung, Ngwathe and Mohokare, the province is plagued with a mushrooming number of informal settlements where there are more than 10 200 existing bucket toilets.

Sisulu, in a written reply, now highlights that areas to be disinfected continuously, include communal water collection points and communal toilet facilities.

She maintains her department's response plan provides measures proposed through the Informal Settlements Upgrading Programme (UISP), which also makes provision for the resettlement of identified dense and overcrowded settlements to more developed areas.

"The department, together with provinces, have identified informal settlements without and those with limited services to determine what would be sufficient ablution facilities to enable the social distancing now required to combat Covid-19 by installing new or augmenting the existing basic services," she said.

OFM News