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| Tiyanjane Mathubu: Carrying a bowl of water |
It may sound allegoric, but that’s what people in Mbayani Township and many others living in urban areas are going through.
Water is life, so they, but when regular, safe, affordable supplies of water and sanitation services are such an expensive commodity, people have no hope of living.
A 2008 research by a local consulting company, Alma Consultancy, shows that over 60 percent of the population lives in informal settlements where access to clean water and sanitation services remains poor.
This is despite the fact that diarrheal disease, which is caused by consuming unsafe water, accounts for an estimated 4.1 percent of the total global burden of diseases and is responsible for the deaths of 1.8 million people every year, according to World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO estimates that 88 percent of that burden is attributable to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and is mostly concentrated in children in developing countries.
A typical way most Malawians get water is that women and children walk a couple of miles away to shallow wells and rivers carrying big buckets on their heads.
Although the water drawn from rivers is usually untreated, many people do not think about treating their water with water guard or chlorine before consumption. There are several reasons to this.
The initiative by Malawi government to sink boreholes as a low-cost technology option for domestic water supply in Malawi brought joy among many. When properly constructed and maintained, they provide consistent supplies of safe and wholesome water with low microbial load and little need for treatment of the drinking water.
Human rights activists say clean water is a basic human right, but statistics show that there are billions and billions of people in the world that don’t have access to clean water.
Among others, the objective of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to reduce persistent poverty and promote sustainable development worldwide, especially in developing countries.
Improvement of drinking water supply and sanitation is a core element of poverty reduction. The MDG target for water is to ‘halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation’.
In its quest to meet this goal, government through the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development is implementing the National Water Development Programme II and one of the programme components is to improve water supply and sanitation services to low income communities in the urban areas.
As a pilot programme, Blantyre Water Board (BWB) has embarked on an Urban Water Supply and Sanitation component of the programme in Mbayani, Blantyre and in November 2009 last awarded a contract to Water for People-Malawi (WfP) to provide technical and facilitation services for water and sanitation to low income areas. The project is being piloted with funding from the World Bank.
“It is expected that in this pilot project, 18 new kiosks will be constructed in Mbayani to increase access to water by the community in the area. Water for People will also rehabilitate broken kiosks to reduce non-accounted for water,” BWB chief executive officer, Andrew Thawe said in an email interview.
Mbayani is one of the highly populated areas in the commercial capital where sanitation is poor and access to potable water is just a dream among most of the residents.
But the situation may soon change as (WfP) plans to construct and repair a total number of 363 water kiosks in almost all low income areas of the commercial city to give residents affordable water systems. The project is targeting 543,253 people in the low income areas.
(WfP) Project Manager Elias Chimulambe said at the launch of the project at Mbayani Primary School early July that with a budget of K84million, his organization plans to construct 18 new water kiosks while a good number of broken taps will face rehabilitation in Mbayani alone.
Chimulambe explained that the project aims at supplying low income earners with affordable water sources as one of the means of fighting dysentery and other diseases resulting from use of contaminated water, reduce the long distances women walk to fetch water and improving sanitation among the residents.
“Water is a catalyst for good health and good sanitation. We believe these kiosks will play a crucial role in the improvement of sanitation among residents of this area,” he said.
“It’s sad that sometimes women rise as early as 3 am to fetch water, especially when there have been water shortages or interruptions during the day. And what’s more sad is that it’s during this type of errands that criminals rape them and snatch their bowls,” said Chimulambe.
Alice Phiri, one of the Mbayani residents likely to benefit from the project, applauded the board for the initiative saying it will greatly improve the status of women who have to take about more 30 minutes to have their turn to draw water from public kiosks, especially when the flow is low.
“Water problems are one of the main reason women have been long confined to kitchen work. We believe that if BWB constructs more kiosks, we’ll no longer be spending much of our time waiting on the queue to have our turn,” said Phiri, a semi-literate woman.
BWB can construct the kiosks, but the challenge remains. Malawian water users are best known for defaulting paying for utility services. What measures has the board put in place to curb this vice?
“Yes, defaulting payment of water bills really affects our operations. But this time, we will facilitate the formation of water users’ associations to run the kiosks as business entities to reduce cases of default among water users,” said Thawe.
“People have to pay their bills so that the board can be able to construct new more kiosks,” he added.
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