Pretoria – The number of households that have access to piped water has increased from 56.3% in 2002 to 89.4% in 2015, said Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) on Thursday.
Statistician General Pali Lehohla addressed media at the release of the 2015 General Household Survey (GHS) report.
According to the report, only 74.9% of Eastern Cape households enjoyed access to piped water.
Nationally 62% of households rated the quality of water related services they received as "good", said Stats SA.
While households’ access to water is improving, 4.4% of households still had to fetch water from rivers and streams among others in 2015.
When coming to electricity the percentage of South African households that were connected to the mains electricity supply rose from 77% in 2002 to 86% in 2015.
Meanwhile, the number of people benefiting from social grants has increased from 12.7% in 2003 to 30.1% in 2015.
According to the report, the percentage of households that received at least one grant increased from 29.9% to 45.5% over the same period.
The report also shows that more than one-third of individuals in the Eastern Cape (40.3%), Limpopo (38.2%), Northern Cape (36.9%) and KwaZulu-Natal (36.8%) were grant beneficiaries compared to 17.5% in Gauteng and 22% in the Western Cape.
The survey which has been conducted by Stats SA since 2002 is aimed at determining the progress of development in the country.
When coming to education the survey indicated that nationally 33.2% of people aged five years and older attended an educational institution.
Approximately 88% of South Africans above the age of five years who attended educational institutions were in either primary or high school, while 4.4% attended tertiary institutions.
Meanwhile, the percentage of learners who reported that they were exempted from paying tuition fees increased from 0.4% in 2002 to 64.6% in 2015. Limpopo followed by the Eastern Cape were the provinces that reported the highest proportion of non- tuition payers.
When coming to the percentage distribution of the main reasons given by people aged seven to 18 years for not attending an educational institution by sex, both males and females’ reasons for not attending any educational institute cited a lack of money as the main reason.
The report notes that there were vast gender disparities in family commitment and perceptions that education is useless with more boys seeing education as useless, said Lehohla.
The report also showed that seven in every 10 households went to public clinics as well as hospitals as their first point of access when household members got ill or injured.
“By comparison, a quarter (25.3%) of households indicated that they went to private doctors, private clinics or hospitals. Most households (92.8%) went to the nearest health facility. The study found that 81.1% of households that attended public healthcare facilities were either very satisfied or satisfied with the service they received compared to 97.7% of households that attended private healthcare facilities,” noted the report.
When coming to food, household access to food has improved since 2002 but remained static since 2011. “The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale which is aimed at determining households’ access to food showed that the percentage of households with inadequate or severely inadequate access to food decreased from 23.9% in 2010 to 22.6% in 2015,” noted the report. – SAnews.gov.za
