Thursday, March 28, 2024

African Development Bank and partners improving sanitation for Lusaka’s low-income suburbs

Share

Zambia: African Development Bank and partners improving sanitation for Lusaka’s low-income suburbs
Zambia: African Development Bank and partners improving sanitation for Lusaka’s low-income suburbs

 

The project is being executed under the Lusaka Sanitation Master Plan which aims to provide citywide sanitation services by 2035

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, December 12, 2019/ — “Sometimes, it looks to me like surgery in the belly of an ancient beast,” says Herbert Chinokoro, senior water and sanitation engineer at the African Development Bank’s Country Office in Lusaka, Zambia.

He is describing the scene along the streets of the capital, Lusaka, where earthmovers and excavators were digging out disused water pipelines from a major trench and replacing them with new and more durable tubes.

The works form part of the $243 million Lusaka Sanitation Program (LSP), funded jointly by the African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org), the European Investment Bank, German Development Bank and the World Bank. The project is being executed under the Lusaka Sanitation Master Plan, which aims to provide citywide sanitation services by 2035 and transform the lives of more than a million Lusaka residents by 2021.

The Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC), which is implementing the program, says about 7,000 households in the George, Kanyama and Chawama suburbs of the capital will benefit from improved sanitation. The objective is to increase access to sustainable sanitation services to the city’s two million residents, especially low-income households, and strengthen LWSC’s capacity to manage sanitation services.

“Lusaka is a relatively flat city and suffers from a recurrent sanitation crisis that continues to claim lives through annual outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and dysentery. There is also persistent environmental pollution,” says Chinokoro.

An estimated 70% of Lusaka’s residents live in peri-urban areas, which are relatively high density, unplanned neighborhoods, largely comprising lower-income residents. About 90% of these townships rely on substandard pit latrines which pose health hazards to the communities. Others use sewers, septic tanks or defecate in the open.

Chinokoro says 57% of Lusaka’s water supply comes from shallow wells, which is prone to contamination from the pit toilets and through fissures in the underlying rocks. “The most vulnerable areas are the low-income neighborhoods, making sewerage an attractive sanitation option. Poor management of solid waste and storm water drainage further compound these problems,” he says.

LWSC sanitation engineer Mwansa Nachula says the sanitation program will improve sanitation facilities and prevent water-borne diseases. “Pit latrines in Lusaka are actually occupying more space than water points and there are a lot of shallow wells and dugouts sited very close to the pit latrines, which makes for easy contamination of the water,” she says.

The sewerage work is only the more visible part of an intense and person-to-person sanitation campaign in the townships. The aim is to protect the groundwater from contamination by building improved toilets with fully lined substructures that prevent leakage of waste. “These structures include seat or squat toilets, super structure with customers’ choice of brick or block; render and paint, door and door latch, among other options,” says Nachula.

In a sprawling township called George Compound, which has the new toilet structures dotted across it, Clara Malumba shows off her new facility, erected steps away from her door and a water standpipe. “There is no whiff here. The pit is lined with cement and plastic, so it does not leech into the groundwater. My kids love it,” says Malumba.

Another resident, Ruth Phiri, is also proud of her new toilet, which she shares with a neighboring household, which is yet to build its own. Both toilets are beautifully painted. A Bank-funded program trains men and women from this community to design and build these structures as a full-time business, thereby providing jobs to the local people.

“It is in these compounds that the battle for improved sanitation in Lusaka will be won or lost, and we seem to be winning,” says Chinokoro. “The first hurdle is getting the ordinary people to see their interest in what you are proposing, and we seem to have achieved that goal. Now they will respond more to pressure from neighbors,” he says.

Source:African Development Bank Group (AfDB)

9 COMMENTS

  1. World Bank,AfDB ,Germans ,European Dev’t Bank all there improving Lusaka sanitation except Lungu’s gov’t which brought us cholera.

  2. mmmmm Iweee twatendwa ukulanda pamuntu umo every tym ni Lungu MMMM change the story let us talk about development and not hate speech,hate speech is total witchcraft and if one is not aware, that is how curses come upon some people without knowing due to ignorance of the scriptutre.Some think hh will deliver them from poverty just work hard,hh will do nothing he is a failed faller.

  3. Failing to clean your own shlt. This is life under pf. You need a muzungu like my wlfe to help you keep yourselves clean. This is why I avoided marrying zambian women. I need to dilute the zambian gene and avoid the negative genotype of failure, theft and greed. Zambia is a depressing country run by incompetent greedy thieves. That is why my wlfe who is whlte managed to convince me to move to the UK until upnd win the elections. All I have heard since we left is suffering, hunger , loadshedding, theft. So now, apart from seeing my family, convince me why I should visit zambia over Christmas? My whlte wlfe says muleeee wanjiiii to you all, in her swiss British accent.

  4. There can never be good sanitation in Lusaka without a proper drainage system. Just 30 minutes of rain brought the whole CBD and Industrial area to a standstill. All roads were flooded! This happens every year. People have to cope with flooded offices and homes. Water is one of the major vehicles for tropical diseases. We’re helpless as there seems to be no plan to address this

  5. For how long will donors pump funds into such activities and how much will be spent to solve this problem once and for all? Year in, year out donors pumping in funds yet the country keeps getting poorer and dirtier!

    • The entire Kabulonga has got septic tanks which are glorified pit latrines. The towns on the copperbelt were all connected to sewer systems unlike Lusaka perhaps because these areas were originally farm plots and the cheek of it is that Lusaka water and sewerage company was at one time charging for sewerage services.

Comments are closed.

Read more

Local News

Discover more from Lusaka Times-Zambia's Leading Online News Site - LusakaTimes.com

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading