{"id":235546,"date":"2022-08-29T18:36:51","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T16:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/these-gqeberha-toilets-are-blocked-and-vandalised-and-municiaplity-stopped-paying-the-cleaners-in-june\/"},"modified":"2022-08-29T18:36:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T16:36:51","slug":"delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked\/","title":{"rendered":"Delays in cleaners\u2019 contracts leave toilets dirty and blocked"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mkhuseli%20Sizani\/kliprand_toilets_small.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"warn_big\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">These toilets at Kliprand Informal Settlement in Gqeberha are dirty and have been vandalised since cleaners stopped working because their contracts were not renewed in June. Photos: Mkhuseli Sizani<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most of the 72 communal toilets at Kliprand informal settlement in Gqeberha are blocked or badly vandalised. The toilets are shared by nearly 400 households.<\/li>\n<li>The toilets have not been maintained or cleaned since June because the contracts for Public Works programme cleaners have not yet been renewed by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.<\/li>\n<li>By Monday morning the contracts for the cleaners had been resolved.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Families at Kliprand Informal Settlement in Gqeberha say they would rather use buckets than the vandalised and blocked toilets in the settlement.<\/p>\n<p>The toilets have not been maintained or cleaned since June because the contracts of Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) cleaners have not yet been renewed by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. Since work has come to a halt, the toilets that had been working are now badly vandalised or blocked.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The 72 communal toilets, shared by nearly 400 households, were built in 2019. Residents say the toilets were shoddily built. After lockdown in 2021, cleaners were appointed on six-month contracts but this ended in June this year.<\/p>\n<p>Resident Juneen Carolus was among 12 people contracted to clean the toilets. She said it\u2019s been tough to provide for her family of eight without the monthly stipend of R3,900.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has left me and my family hungry. I have been in this project for almost two and half years. The money I got from cleaning helped me buy food and take my four children to school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>She said her family relies on her grandmother\u2019s social grant which is not enough to cover their expenses. \u201cI owe the loan sharks a lot of money because I was hoping by now we would be back at work. Sometimes I do people\u2019s washing for R50,\u201d Carolus said.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mkhuseli%20Sizani\/dirty_kliprand_toilet.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">One of the toilets that have not been cleaned since June.<\/p>\n<p>Belinda McMaster said, \u201cThe toilets are disgusting and leak day and night. Many of them are blocked and have maggots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She has volunteered to clean one of the toilets her family shares with eight other households. \u201cThere is no way I can leave the toilets dirty because it will cause me and my children to get infections.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ward 33 Councillor Mzwandile Sidina promised that the cleaning would be done soon. \u201cWe have a problem with workers wanting to work forever. The project is meant for everyone who is jobless. Each person is only meant to work for six months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Asked whether the vandalised and faulty toilets would be fixed, he said, \u201cThe municipality will appoint the contractor to fix all the faulty toilets. Those who had contracts before are not allowed to be employed again in this project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Municipal spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki confirmed that the programme is meant to provide temporary water, sanitation and jobs to communities. \u201cAfter six months we employ a new group of the workers. Our budget starts from July to following year July. The project was stopped in June because of new budget allocations.\u201d On Monday morning, the community confirmed that the old workers will work for three months before new contracts are signed with a different group.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These toilets at Kliprand Informal Settlement in Gqeberha are dirty and have been vandalised since cleaners stopped working because their contracts were not renewed in June. Photos: Mkhuseli Sizani Most of the 72 communal toilets at Kliprand informal settlement in Gqeberha are blocked or badly vandalised. The toilets are shared by nearly 400 households. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-235546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/delays-in-cleaners-contracts-leave-toilets-dirty-and-blocked.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}