Zambia’s commitment to improving water and sanitation situation commendable-SWA

Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), the global multi-stakeholder alliance working to increase political leadership and improve accountability in the area of water, sanitation and hygiene has commended the Zambian government for demonstrating political will to improve the sector.

S.W.A. Executive Chair Catarina de Albuquerque said that the willingness by the Zambian government to join a global and mutually accountability mechanism to tackling the lack of water and sanitation demonstrates its strong commitment to the water and sanitation sector.

Ms. De Albuquerque was speaking in an interview in Lusaka recently that becoming a pioneer country will accord a chance to several stakeholders in Zambia to track commitments by government and its partners in addressing water and sanitation challenges in a transparent manner.

She said the Sanitation and Water for All works on creation or promotion of political will around water and sanitation.

“Sanitation is important because it enables countries to save money and improves efficiency and promotes the right to education, the right to work because people are not sick, the financial impact is more indirect so we have to analyse it a bit more for partners to understand,” Ms. De Albuquerque.

She added, “What I see is a significant political will and determination to tackling issues of lack of water and sanitation and as S.W.A, one of the things we have put together is the global accountability mechanism which is a mutual accountability mechanism that will call on countries and our partners to table commitments and to commit to making improvements in this field.”

Ms. De Albuquerque said the Zambian government has demonstrated willingness to ascend to a mutual accountability mechanism which confirms its commitment to improvement the water and sanitation situation.

“Yesterday, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation and Environment, came to our meeting and I challenged them whether Zambia would like to be a pioneer country and he said yes, so this is a kind of political will engagement and political vision and the political support to the support that we would like to see,” Ms. De Albuquerque said.

“It means the Zambian will be called upon to table commitments at our upcoming High-level Ministerial meeting in 2019, we would also engage other partners in the country both civil society, bilateral and multilateral partners to show how they would want to support the government and they we would like to record everything that is being done and how government is working with other partners in order to be able to share with other countries that are our partners, we currently have 71 partner countries, we would want to use the Zambia example to share with other partner countries.”

She continued, “The commitments must be aligned with the SDGs as in universal access by 2030, its obvious I don’t expect the 2019 commitments by Zambia to be talking about universal access already. We would have to have milestone by 2030 so that by 2030, the commitments corresponds with the SDGs.”

“There is a recipe to make this happen. The government must be in the driver’s seat because it is the government that has the legal obligation, it is the government that has been elected to make this happen but government must not be working alone, government has to engage and work with other partners and make sure that there is a long term plan, so there is the 7NDP and Vision 2030, so there must be national commitments that have to be aligned with the SDGs and there have to be ambitious but realistic milestones along the way.”

Ms. De Albuquerque added that there is also need to bring in other development partners on board.

“We also have to bring other development partners on board and we have to ask them, look we had agreed at the SWA Steering Committee to support this mutual accountability mechanism and you are supposed to table your commitments at the national level to support the government, so come forward and table your commitments and be ready to be held accountable on the commitments you are giving to the governments,” she said.