The provision of basic services, including sanitation and water, are municipal functions. This means that cities are responsible to provide these services and must allocate money from their budgets to do so.
The findings from our research and analysis on the City of Cape Town’s budgets show that capital allocations for sanitation in informal settlements – used for long term infrastructure such as flush toilets – are extremely low and disproportionately small.
Instead the City focuses its spending on inferior, expensive and temporary sanitation facilities for informal settlements. The City argues that it is constrained by where it can install toilets due to the things such as flood. This is an irrational argument and our data shows that the City can in fact install flush toilets that are cleaner, healthier and more dignified to use.