Cachet Park toilet facilities ‘disgusting’
Disgust. This is what students from the North-West University (NWU) experience when have to use the public toilet facilities of the Bult’s green recreational area, Cachet Park.
The park is a place where students come together to play sports, take study breaks during load-shedding or find relief from stress. But, they say they are turned off by the lack of useable toilet facilities.
Stanley Prince, a student in ancient languages at the NWU Potchefstroom campus, says the public facilities at Cachet Park are not up to standard. He and a group of friends frequent Cachet Park when they have nothing to do to play touch rugby. Before coming to the park, they use the toilet facilities at home and they bring their own water.
He says he is disappointed in the toilet facilities in the area, and is “honestly scared to go inside”.
“There is literally one toilet, and the toilet is not even a toilet – it is a hole in the concrete. There is always water everywhere it always smells really bad,” says Tshwanelo “Sterling” Matlala, a pharmacy student at the university. He mentions seeing people use the trees because the facilities are so bad.
Matlala further mentions that you wouldn’t go there voluntarily unless that’s the only option that you have.
Kabelo Mahlabe, a chemistry and physiology student, says he never uses toilets in the area because nobody ever cleans them. He describes them as blocked, without water, and in short, “disgusting”.
He and his friends use the toilet facilities in a nearby university building. Mahlabe says, “you can’t use the toilets in the park, especially girls. It is bad.”
At times, students are so busy playing soccer or rugby that they forget about drinking water or that they need the toilet. According to Ben Makagale, a financial accounting student, someone living around the Bult area brought water for them while they were playing soccer.
The students hope that when they return in 2023 there will be a plan to address the problem.
Although the Cachet Park City Improvement District (CID) is involved in aspects such as the safety and cleaning of common areas, parks and sidewalks in the Bult area, maintaining and cleaning toilets are not part of its mandate.
“Cachet Park CID employs subcontractors who work daily to keep the park clean and maintained with regards to landscaping. The toilet facilities are not part of the scope of the project,” says Johan Naudé, the general manager of Cachet Park CID.
“We have requested numerous times that the municipality repair and maintain the toilet facilities as we do not have the financial capabilities to continuously maintain broken infrastructure such as water leaks due to vandalism, and so forth. This remains the responsibility of the municipality.”
Naude adds that they have on numerous occasions requested that the municipality repair and maintain the toilet facilities for public use as they have seen people use the spaces behind the facilities and the trees, which is unacceptable. “We have not received any feedback to this day.”
“We are a non-profit company funded by our community, and facilitating repairs and maintenance is beyond our scope of work. It is not part of our memorandum of understanding with the municipality. Therefore it falls beyond our responsibilities at this stage,” Naude says. He adds that they are open to taking on more responsibilities but have yet to hear from the municipality about their requests. By Eugene Shitikulu