Toilet in Do noon, Photo by Mandla Mncayi.
10 October 2012
Mandla Mncayi lives in Du Noon in Cape Town. He lives in an RDP house and is a street committee member. Mncayi is, like many residents in his area, fed up with the way mobile toilets are collected in his area, which is called Site 5.
The toilets get collected once a week and this takes place in the morning or during lunch time. At this time a lot of people are already awake and eating. Many of these toilets are in front of people’s houses. Therefore the smell and flies go into their homes during the collection time.
Lubabalo Makeleni, the ward councillor of Du Noon, said it is not only Site 5 that is facing this problem. He says this is a common complaint in informal settlements. He has also complained about the problem. The cause of the problem is that there is only one truck in the area and it has to clean toilets serving 4,000 shacks, which takes the whole day. The times at which the truck cleans a particular toilet are therefore difficult to predict.