Nearly half of SA Schools tested have unsafe drinking water

Guest: Dr Ferrial Adam | Executive Manager at WaterCAN

Unsafe drinking water in our schools is a national crisis. Nearly half the schools tested by WaterCAN showed bacterial contamination in their water. Africa Melane speaks with Dr. Ferrial Adam about what this means for education, health, and human rights in South Africa.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rise and shine. It's a new day. It's early breakfast
with Africa Milani eight minutes. Night is two six o'clock.
Water Can led a month long water testing initiative called
Water Warriors Collective, which was a project that saw ninety
five schools in eight provinces take part, and of course
the learners being the scientists, if you like, the collectors

(00:24):
of the samples. And some of the findings from this
initiative are rather worrying. Joining me on the line is
the executive director of water Can. That's doctor Ferrial Adam Firal.
Very good morning and welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Good Morning Africa, and thank me, thank you for having
me on your show.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
I said that some of those findings were rather disturbing,
right because it begs the question is it's safe for
our learners to be drinking water in our schools? And
I should preamble this by saying phil that it was
ninety five schools. We have just shy of twenty five
thousand schools across the country. So it is a snapshot,
but it's often a very good indicator of what the

(01:02):
true reality of what's happening across the country is, Isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
It absolutely I mean, even if we think about some
of the statistics that almost twenty five percent of our
schools don't have access to clean running water, so you
know that a lot of them are probably using backup
systems like jojo tanks or other options, right. And that
is why for us, this project raised quite a bit

(01:27):
of red flags because the one worrying result was the
results we got from the jojo tanks. Almost seventy three
percent of our jojo tanks that were tested were positive
for bacteria.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
And what sort of bacteria are we talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
For real?

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Because there is some good bacteria, but obviously we're talking
about batcateria, right.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
So water Can uses a testing kit to test the
water quality, right, and one of it, there's two bacteria
tests in there that specific looking at bad drinking water
if it's bad, So this total coliform is the one,
and then you're looking at ecolie present in the water.
We found very high levels of total coliform. One or

(02:13):
two had ecolib but that wasn't you know, the most
of them had high levels of So total coliform you'll
get from from dead animals or animals, plants, waste matter,
and human waste. So it's all of that you can't
specify really, but the high levels for us means that

(02:34):
there's something wrong. That means that the jojo tanks need maintenance.
So remember you know you have joji tanks, there's a
lid on the top. You could have had something fall
in if they were the in water harvesting. It could
have been that the gutters were dirty. So it could
be a number of reasons why this water was contaminated.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
And more broadly, forty three percent of school water samples
tested were unsafe for human consumption. That's a stata.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
The higher percentage it is, I mean it's high and
like shocking because young people are using this water. But
also it aligns to if you think about the Blue
Drop and Green Drop report from national government, it aligns
to that where if the Blue Drop Report, which measures

(03:22):
the quality of our drinking water, has a forty six
percent of our drinking water is not fit for drinking. Now,
fair enough, that is about cap water, but I think
this does align to that kind of.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Stats.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
So it is shocking and it is worrying, and I
think what it also raised for us is that often
when we're talking about water and access to water and
water quality, we're not looking at the schools and the clinics,
and I think that is something that needs to be
looked at. I know that clinics, forty six percent of
our clinics don't have access to running water.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Sure, let's talk about the long term health concerns that
this raises. Then. So if our learners, our kids, our
grandchildren are going to school every day and they drinking
water that is unsafe, what sort of future harm are
we creating here?

Speaker 2 (04:18):
I mean the first, you know, in the immediate you're
going to have a lot of people, a lot of
young people having whoever drinks that water could have could
get sick like diarrhea, could miss school. So you're basically
affecting their education. You're affecting their long life, their health.
And so that's the kind of thing that you can't

(04:39):
It doesn't it's not safe for people to help to
be continuously exposed to bad drinking water. Globally Africa, there's
about eight hundred thousand people a year that die from
drinking water was contaminated with bacteria, bad bacteria.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
That's scary. Now, this happened in ninety five schools across
eight provinces where the provinces that were more worrying you
and the researchers than others.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yes, the provinces that were more concerning was so Eastern
Cape and Quasulin Hotel. So we didn't remember in the
because it's such a small snapshot. We had very few
from Lampopo, Northern Cape. We didn't have Umlanga, but the

(05:38):
Eastern Cape schools because a lot of them are dependent
on Jojia tanks and the Quasilian Hotel, that's where we
saw the worst results.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
It's important to note, by the way, that we have
eleven thousand schools or there are about in South Africa
that do not have a single flashing toilet, and a
significant number of those would be in the Eastern Cape
as well. What happens next for you?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
So on the first we've already started with the next,
which is basically we needed to tell the schools immediately
that please put up warnings that the children should not
be drinking, and we needed to make sure that they
have alternatives for drinking because young people, you know, playing sports,
running outside, you know, they need to drink water regularly.

(06:24):
The other thing we've done is in a very kind
of stop gap measure, We've got a company, business Connect,
that has donated purification tablets, so we're going to be
shipping that out to the schools and we've got the
instructions of how to use them so that at least
they can have drinking water. We're then trying to get

(06:45):
you know, it was water Can with a number of
partners that did this project, and the partners are the
ones who have direct contact with the schools. So we
want them to also contact the municipalities to ask them
to clean the jojia tanks in the Internet, because I
think that is what the main concern is is that
probably schools have put in jojia tanks because they need

(07:08):
water because it's not enough and so there needs to
be constant maintenance of these tanks. So that would be
the short to medium term. I mean in the longer term, Africa,
we need schools to have more safe, reliable access to
water and that is something that must be looked at
at a national level.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Absolutely, it's important work for real. Thank you very much
for making the time to chat to us about it.
Doctor ferraal Adam is the executive director of water Can.
Reflecting of course, on the Water Warrior project that found
forty three percent of schools had unsafe water for drinking
due to high bacterial contamination. Lovely to hear that there

(07:47):
are some solutions that are going to be introduced at
the schools at least