The Ecological Sanitation Research group (EcoSanRes) at Stockholm Environment Institute has launched its first Knowledge Node on Sustainable Sanitation for southern Africa during the second Africa Water Week. It is one of the ten planned regional nodes, the next one will be launched next week in Uganda. “Our aim is to train groups in sustainable sanitation and develop local capacity to respond to demand for information and training in the region, says Madeleine Fogde, EcoSanRes Capacity Development Manager.” Other knowledge nodes will be established in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Water Research Commission (WRC) is managing the the secretariat of the Southern African knowledge node. The Water Information Network South Africa (WIN-SA) is implementing it. The Southern African Node will create a knowledge management hub for sustainable sanitation. The hub will facilitate and coordinate capacity and skills development, knowledge sharing and collaboration. It will furthermore assist individuals and organisations from different disciplines within the SADC to:

o Participate in sustainable sanitation activities and innovations;

o Document and share experiences on sustainable sanitation as generated by different stakeholders and;

o Develop and maintain a sanitation portal that facilitates e-collaboration amongst stakeholders in the region.

In Johannesburg the three partners launched a new quarterly magazine for Southern Africa “Sanitation Matters”. The first issue Nov 2009 – Jan 2010 is very colourful. It carries an interesting story of Sanitation Learning Journey from a Namibian delegation to South Africa. They looked at various urine diversion toilets and other ecological sanitation technologies in various provinces in South Africa. The information will help feed Namibia’s the sanitation strategy and its implementation, as called for by a cabinet decision to improve sanitation.

In another article on South Africa’s Free Basic Sanitation Implementation Strategy the author says that the sanitation targets will not be met in 2010 as earlier planned. The new target is 2014.

For more information, contact Ditshego Kgopotso Magoro, Node Manager, e-mail Ditshegom@win-sa.org.za

The water cut-offs  in Cape Town based on one of its by-laws is unconstitutional, as the South African Constitution provides that everyone has the right to have access to sufficient water. The by-law conflicts with the empowering legislation as well as with the Water Services Act. But the City of Cape Town is within the law in terms of applying water flow restrictors to those that are defaulting.

These are the main conclusions of the Department of Water Affairs’ response in its Regulatory Declaration with regard to the concerns and issues that have been raised by various civil society groups in 2008 and were formally raised at the Portfolio Committee on Water Affairs and Forestry in February 2009.

“However, the impact of the restrictors has very negative consequences for human dignity and they are therefore socially unacceptable. Currently there is no regulation that covers the flow rate for those restricted. DWA commits itself to review this issue and shall advise all municipalities to review the use of flow restrictors”, writes DWA in its role as national regulator of water services.

On two other complaints the regulator sides with the civil society. The list provided by Cape Town of areas where the flow restrictors have been installed show that 70 percent of them were installed in low income areas and 30 percent in affluent areas. “Hence the community has a point about the device being used mainly in low income areas. DWA has noted that Cape Town City Council has taken a decision to implement the device in all new developments irrespective of low or high income area”.

On the complaint about insufficient consultations with the citizens DWA regulator concludes that although Cape Town provided extensive documentation on consultation “it does appear that the communities are not satisfied with this process. DWA has made recommendations on this issue”. [which ones?]

Source: City of Cape Town Report, in: Water Regulation Bulletin, no 3, October 2009, p. 6

The African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) has named winners of Africa’s premier awards for exemplary achievements in sanitation and hygiene.

The AMCOW AfricaSan top honor for Leadership has been awarded to His Royal Highness Chief Macha, a traditional and community leader from Zambia who has used his status in a uniquely proactive manner to advocate for improved sanitation, not just in his Kingdom of Tonga which has now attained Open Defecation Free (ODF) status, but also in the wider district and province with a multitude of stakeholders (see related blog post).

Prof. Albert M. Wright (left). Photo: IISD

AMCOW AfricaSan awarded a Lifetime Achievement honor to Professor Albert Wright, who for more than four decades has made significant contributions to strategic development of water, sanitation and hygiene at global, African and national levels. He has been teacher, researcher, innovator, investment adviser, policy advisor and inspiration and mentor to an entire generation of the African water and sanitation community.

The AMCOW AfricaSan honor to an NGO/Civil Society Institution has been awarded to the Ethiopia Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Movement, a multi‐stakeholder coalition that has been exceptionally successful in promoting behavioural change on water, sanitation and hygiene, and increase the political and social commitment for progress in these areas.

Dr. Peter Morgan at the NETSSAF Conference, 2008. Photo: EcoSanRes

The AMCOW AfricaSan honor for Technical Innovation was awarded to Dr Peter Morgan, a Zimbabwean national, who for four decades has provided Africa with the most innovative technical ideas in sanitation and hygiene directly affecting poor people.

A special commendation was made to His Royal Highness Prince Willem‐Alexander for his global leadership role in advancing the cause of improved sanitation and hygiene.

AMCOW also announced the following awards:

• The AMCOW AfricaSan Award (Runner up) for Leadership to WES Sudan.
• The AMCOW AfricaSan Award (Finalist) for Leadership to The Daily Mail (Zambia).
• The AMCOW AfricaSan Award (Runner up) for Technical Innovation to the Centre Régional pour l’Eau Potable et l’Assainissement à faible coût (CREPA).
• The AMCOW AfricaSan Award (Finalist) for Technical Innovation to the Office National de l’Assainissement du Sénégal (ONAS).
• The AMCOW AfricaSan Award (Runner up) for NGO/Civil Society to Water for People (Malawi).
• The AMCOW AfricaSan Award (Runner up) for NGO/Civil Society to Africa Media Aid (Ghana).

AMCOW is the driving force behind the AfricaSan movement, a regional initiative that seeks to place sanitation and hygiene at the top of the development agenda in Africa. In 2008, the Africa Union Heads of State Summit mandated AMCOW to co‐ordinate implementation and monitoring of the eThekwini Declaration – which seeks to assist African countries to accelerate the achievement of national and global targets on water, sanitation and hygiene.

The AMCOW AfricaSan Awards are dedicated to recognizing outstanding efforts and achievements in sanitation and hygiene in Africa which result in large‐scale, sustainable behavior changes and tangible impacts.

The 2009 Awards are the first in a series of honors for achievements in three categories:

• The Leadership Award honors individuals or institutions for strong leadership to sanitation and/or hygiene improvement through policy and strategy development, advocacy, institutional arrangements, financing, coordination and capacity development.
• The Technical Innovation Award honors individual and institutional contributions to the improvement of technical solutions for sanitation services and products to make them affordable, reliable, and sustainable.
• The NGO/Civil Society Award honors individual and institutional support to and mobilization of communities for the improvement of their sanitation and hygienic conditions.

Other categories will be honored in 2010.

The awards are administered by AMCOW, in collaboration with the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), the African Development Bank (AfDB), UNICEF, the UN Secretary‐General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB), UN‐Water Africa, WaterAid and the Africa Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW).

Read more: DWAF, 09 Nov 2009

Mayor Dan Plato and Western Cape premier Helen Zille both object to a planned government investigation into water cuts in Cape Town. The Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, set up a task team in October 2009 to investigate alleged water cuts after he visited Mitchells Plain and found several homes of poor residents without water. Shickela’s ministry circulated an SMS calling on people to report “water cut-offs and other poor municipal services in Cape Town”.

Plato said Shiceka’s task team* was “unconstitutional” because it interfered with the autonomy of the city, and he has banned city workers from cooperating with the task team.

Zille, who is also the leader of opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, accused the ANC-led government of abusing state resources “for the purpose of smearing a DA-led government in the run-up to an election”. She said residents had told her that, before Shiceka’s visit, the local ANC committee had instructed residents to turn off the stopcocks on their water meters so that it would look as if the water had been cut off when they turned on the taps inside their houses. Zille’s allegation led to a probe by the provincial ANC, which rejected her claims saying they there unproven.

In September 2009, Shiceka threatened to strip the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial government of their powers if they failed to deliver basic services to poor residents soon. Zille maintains that Cape Town has the most generous free water policy in the country. This was backed up when Empowerdex, an economic empowerment rating agency, rated the City of Cape Town as the top municipality in South Africa for Service Delivery. “Why is a national minister targeting a municipality which is a model of good governance and efficiency in comparison with most ANC-run local authorities? And why now?” Zille asked in her weekly newsletter on the DA website.

* Ministerial Task Team on Water Cut-offs, Electricity, Sanitation and Housing in the City of Cape Town

Source: Anna Majavu, Sowetan, 05 Nov 2009 ; : Andisiwe Makinana, Cape Argus / IOL, 27 Oct 2009 ; Warda Meyer and Andisiwe Makinana, Cape Argus / allAfrica.com, 28 Oct 2009 ; Helen Zille, SA Today / PoliticsWeb, 06 Nov 2009 ; Martin Pollack, City of Cape Town, 23 Oct 2009

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) is under fire from both the allAfrica.com”>government and anti-privatisation activists for poor service delivery and corruption. In the wake of this criticism, Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL), the private operator which supports GWCL since 2006 as part of a World Bank-supported project, has launched an effort to collect unpaid bills. The World Bank maintains that the project is making significant progress.

Full story

The Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing has constituted a committee to review the management contract between Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) and Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL).

The review exercise was prompted by the problems hindering water delivery, especially in urban areas, and the implementation of the US$ 80 million World Bank sponsored Urban Water Project between GWCL and AVRL. (See also Wikipedia – Water privatization in Ghana).

Water minister Albert Abongo said the misunderstanding between the AVRL and the GWCL about their respective responsibilities in regard to water operations, revenue management and maintenance of systems was having a debilitating effect on water.

Mr Abongo said government was not pleased with the performance of the expatriate management operator, AVRL, which was contracted by the previous government to improve management practices at GWCL.

He said it was too early at this stage to recommend termination of the contract.

Mr Abongo said a steering committee to be chaired by him, would help to address inefficiencies that would be identified by the review committee.

Answering a question as to whether the public should expect a shake-up in the management of GWCL, Mr Abongo said a change in attitude rather than a massive clean-up of personnel would reverse problems facing the company.

He asked the GWCL to tackle the diversion of company property by personnel for their personal use, which he said remained a major drawback on the operations of the company.

Mr Abongo said some staff of GWCL also connived with the public to engage in illegal water connections, depriving the company of revenue.

The National Coalition against Privatisation of Water (NCAP) is considering dragging GWCL and AVRL to court for what it describes as poor service delivery, if all the petitions and interventions it has brought against the two companies fail to yield the desired results.

The group has already petitioned the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), and was in the process of sending another petition to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), to investigate AVRL’s inability to meet their performance targets, as well as the claim that they made about GH¢30million [US$ 21 million] profit, which has been denied by the GCWL.

One of the key issues NCAP has raised about the management contract between the GWCL and AVRL is the reduction of Non-Revenue Water (NRW) by 5% each year.

Per the contract estimation, this should have been 40% in 2008, but the NCAP claims that it is 51.7%, that is 11.7% higher than the target.

According to the NCAP there has been only a 2% increase in production, mainly due to expansion works at Dalum (Tamale), Sekyere Hemang and Bafiakrom in the Central Region, with only a 1% increase in installed capacity.

The AVRL appears to be taking the criticism to heart by announcing that debtors will be disconnected and prosecuted if they don’t settle their arrears. It is offering a GH¢20 [US$ 14] reward for all “who divulge [via a Toll Free number] information on unscrupulous and anti-social citizens who indulge in malpractices like illegal connections, self reconnection, the use of in-line suction pumps.”

The World Bank remains upbeat about the Ghana Urban Water Project. In the FY09 status of report of projects in Ghana, published in October 2009, the Bank says:

“Significant progress has been made towards achieving the objective of restoring long-term financial stability, viability and sustainability of the Ghana Water Company Limited by: (a) having already reached the target of recovering 100% of the operation and maintenance costs from the utility revenues; (b) having surpassed the efficiency target of less than 10 employees per 1,000 connections; and (c) having promulgated the National Water Policy.”

Source : Accra Daily Mail / allAfrica.com, 19 Oct 2009 ; Ghanaian Chronicle / allAfrica.com, 16 Oct 2009 ; Peace FM Online, 02 Nov 2009

Some 16,000 volunteers will take to the streets of Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, next month in a United Nations programme to tackle health hazards caused by public dumping of waste in a rapidly growing metropolitan area that has endured repeated fatal outbreaks of cholera, water-borne diseases and malaria.

The project is part of a £20 million United Kingdom-funded project to improve the sustainable use of natural resources in Africa’s largest country, to be carried out by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) over the next three years. UK Minister of State for International Development Gareth Thomas was visiting Juba to launch the segment that aims to establish long-term waste management capacity in Southern Sudan.

The clean-up, which will be replicated in the nine states of southern Sudan, will be coupled with a sustained awareness-raising campaign to encourage the citizens of Juba to adopt an environmentally friendly attitude towards the disposal of waste in the city.

UNEP’s country-wide programme seeks to help the people of Sudan, a country ravaged by several current and recent conflicts, to achieve sustainable peace, recovery and development by improving the management of natural resources.

The recently established UNEP office in Juba will also provide technical support to the Government to manage its forests and other valuable natural resources in a sustainable manner, and work to build the capacity of Government ministries to tackle environmental issues.

After a peace agreement in 2005 ended two decades of war between the Government in Khartoum, in the north, and southern Sudanese rebels, UNEP conducted a post-conflict environmental assessment, making 85 recommendations and outlining a detailed US$ 120-million action plan over three to five years.

Source: UN News Centre, 16 Oct 2009

In Swaziland over 3,000 boreholes have been drilled in the country since 1986, but over 40 per cent of the population have no access clean water and about 90 percent of the community water projects are not functioning. Many boreholes have broken down and the communities, who were supposed to maintain them, lack the know-how or money to carry out repairs.

Read the full story below

In the drought-stricken area of Siteki, Tibuyile Maziya has been trying to fill up her four 20-litre buckets with water at a community for the last four hours. With a baby on her back and two more buckets to fill up, 19-year-old Maziya says she walks to this well at least three times a week to get water for her family of 15.

Siteki, a small town in the eastern part of Swaziland, has not had water for decades.

“Sometimes I spend the whole day waiting for the water to surface,” said Maziya. “You have to get here very early in the morning, otherwise you can go back home empty handed.” Sometimes when she comes to the well, there are more people than water available.

Besides spending so much time waiting for water and walking for three kilometres to the well, she still has to immerse a bucket inside and has to pull up the heavy water-filled bucket by hand.

Surprisingly, Maziya is standing next to a hand pump borehole and two hundred metres away there is another one. “All these boreholes are not working because they have broken down,” she said. The hand pump boreholes stopped working because of a mechanical failure. And there was no one around who could fix it. “For about two years now, the community has been relying on this spring for water.”

A lot of people in the country, especially those in the Lubombo Region, are still travelling long distances, and have to compete with livestock drinking at the streams for the water. Others rely on springs and wells.

But hand pumps and electric powered boreholes are a common sight throughout the lowveld and dry middleveld.

According to the director of the Department of Water Affairs, Obed Ngwenya, over 3,000 boreholes have been drilled in the country since 1986 but more than 40 percent of the country’s one million population still does not have access to clean water.

In fact, said Ngwenya, about 90 percent of the community water projects are not functioning because many boreholes have broken down and nobody wants to take responsibility. He said the idea is that once government or a development agency has put up a borehole at an area, the community should maintain it. “Although government and development agencies have tried to drill boreholes in many places to make water more accessible to the people, but we haven’t been very successful so far,” said Ngwenya. “Communities fail to repair these boreholes.”

The reasons for this vary. But mostly communities say they do not know how to repair the boreholes. And they are too poor to afford the services of a trained mechanic.

He said the country has only tapped onto only ten percent of its ground water resources although 90 percent of its people, the majority of which are from rural areas, depend on groundwater.

Many communities, said Ngwenya, using electric powered pumps fail to pay the electricity bills and the Swaziland Electricity Company cuts them off and they remain with no water.

A lot of community boreholes have run dry after pumping water for a few months. It is a sign that no proper assessment of available underground water at those places has been done, said Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Forum chairperson Jameson Mkhonta.

He admitted that there is poor management of groundwater in the country. “Until a year ago when the WASH Forum was established, there has been a lot of duplication of activities with regards to the supply of ground water at rural areas,” said Mkhonta, “Non-governmental organisations have been drilling boreholes in the same areas within a very short distance without any proper coordination which is the reason why some boreholes have run dry.”

The WASH Forum, which comprises of non-governmental organisations; United Nations agencies; government and companies that provide water services, has received about 1.5 million dollars. The money will be used to repair damaged boreholes and drill more boreholes throughout the dry areas so that people like Maziya could easily access water.

The forum has realised that, besides the fact that a lot of boreholes have broken down, some of them have not been installed properly in the first place, a blame Mkhonta attributed to some private companies whom he said cut corners when installing the pumps.

Another identified loophole, according to Natacha Terrot, the communications officer at Yonge Nawe Environmental Conservation Group, is that some companies drill beyond the stipulated six inch diameter.

“The haphazard manner at which boreholes are drilled in the country could mean we’ll find ourselves depleting the water table,” warned Terrot. “We need proper monitoring to ensure that people adhere to legislation and the stipulated guidelines.”

In the meantime, the management of groundwater resources is not only a challenge for Swaziland but for the whole Southern African Development Community (SADC). According to Barbara Lopi, the Communications Specialist SADC Groundwater and Drought Management Project, because groundwater is not seen, there is very little awareness around its importance at all levels of society and government.

“The real value of groundwater is not visible enough to influence policy decisions and resource allocation that could lead to improved use, development and management of the resource within the region,” said Lopi.

As a result, SADC is establishing a regional Groundwater Management Institute in South Africa which will be operational next year.

Source: Mantoe Phakathi, IPS, 28 Oct 2009

The Water ministry may have lost millions of shillings through unexplained payments to water drilling contractors.

The ministry is hard put to explain the debts, which now exceed Sh930 million [US$ 13 million] and is suspected to have been lost at the National Water and Pipeline Corporation.

In a report obtained by the Nation [newspaper], the Efficiency Monitoring Unit based in the Office of the Prime Minister accuses the corporation’s board of supervising the near-collapse of the firm due to the debts.

The report focuses on the period before the 2007 General Election, when large sums of money were paid out to contractors and suppliers without invoices or government Local Purchase Orders (LPOs).

The report comes after investigations on the corporation’s financial position. The board had held a special meeting on October 9, 2008, seeking the assistance of the Inspectorate of State Corporations in the probe.

According to the report, though the corporation has applied for Sh550 million [US$ 7.7 million] from the government to offset the extra works under the 2006/07 financial year, it has continued to find itself in debt.

The report recommends disciplinary action and in some cases surcharges against former managing director J K Muchemi, head of procurement Ferdinand Musakhala, finance boss Stanley Mombo Amuti, and the head of internal audit, a Mr Onguso, as “culpable for the financial malfeasance and poor management”.

“It is very difficult to ascertain whether the goods/services were actually delivered/rendered given the situation where invoices are raised without prior orders being issued,” said the report.

Suspended

According to the corporation’s chairman, Prof Stanley Shitole, two employees have been suspended and three others asked by the board to step aside to pave the way for investigations following the disappearance of more than Sh30 million [US$ 420,000].

However, he denied reports that Sh10 billion [US$ 140 million] meant for water storage dams had been misappropriated. Water minister Charity Ngilu said she was studying the report, which she received last week, and would soon announce the action needed to restore the corporation to firm footing.

Source: The Nation / allAfrica.com, 25 Oct 2009

Water and Irrigation Minister, Charity Ngilu. Photo: Business Daily

Are women less corrupt than men? Kenya’s water minister Charity Ngilu seems to think so.  In the controversy surrounding the Mombasa Water and Sewerage Company, she said she would only approve a new board “if it was gender balanced and that the treasurer be a woman to help contain mismanagement of public funds”.

Read the full story below:

Mombasa Water and Sewerage Company which has been at the centre of controversy will be dissolved following planned merger of all water firms at the Coast.

The plan involves merging all the water companies in the Coast to form two — one for the North and the second for the South Coast.

The dissolution of the company which has been dogged by allegations of mismanagement would be a slap in the face of local mayor Ahmed Mohdhar who has been fighting for the formation of a new board of directors.

Three years ago the ministry of Water disbanded the firm’s board of directors following alleged mismanagement of funds and since then the company has been running without a board.

Water minister Charity Ngilu early this year was to inaugurate a new board but had to call off the meeting after fierce protests from residents who disapproved of the people who had been picked as directors.

Mrs Ngilu said she would only give a nod to the new board if it was gender balanced and that the treasurer be a woman to help contain mismanagement of public funds.

But as tension rocked the company, Coast Water Services Board (CWSB) chief executive officer Idd Mwasina said all the water firms in the region would be merged into two.

[...] The CWSB boss added that the Ministry of Water came up with the new regulation so as to improve the management and operations of water services in the region.

He said another reason for the planned merger which is expected to be in force before the end of the year was to save some companies which cannot sustain themselves.

“Some companies have been struggling since the revenue generated cannot sustain their water operations. The aim of the companies is to ensure the commodity reach of all residents rather than for them to make profits,” Mr Mwasina said.

[...] It has also emerged that Mrs Ngilu rejected the formation of the Mombasa water company board since the mayor had flouted the nomination of directors’ process.

Source: Mathias Ringa, The Nation / allAfrica.com, 14 Oct 2009

When water experts warned at the turn of the millennium that soon wars will be fought not over oil anymore but over water, little did Zimbabweans know that they would be some of the first people affected by this dire prediction.

There is increasing competition for water due to a combination of numerous environmental and political factors, including climate change, poor local planning and lack of adequate financial and material resources to bring running water to poor communities.

In rural Zimbabwe, lack of clean water has become a reality for many communities, in addition to other hardships, such as food shortages, insufficient health services and lack of sanitation.

[...] According to Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a unit set up by the Commercial Farmers of Zimbabwe (CFZ), an organisation that represents the legal interests of dispossessed farmers, wells have dried up throughout the country and no efforts have been made to drill more boreholes to provide water to both humans and livestock.

Plumtree

[...] In Plumtree, a poor, drought-prone rural community located about 160 kilometres southwest of Zimbabwe‚s second largest city, Bulawayo, a hostile fight has broken out between neighbouring communities around access to the few remaining water sources. [R]esidents from the Botswana side of the river have claimed parts of the river as their own, threatening those from the Zimbabwean side with assault if they come to fetch water.

What has heightened tensions even further. Out of desperation, villagers have started to bring their livestock to drink from the river too, as there is no alternative water source for animals.

“The Batswana say we must not bring our livestock here, but we cannot let our cattle die in this heat,” local resident Thabiso Mkwena said.

Letting livestock drink from the same water source as humans has exposed locals to a number of water-borne diseases. Earlier this year, medical staff at the public hospital in Plumtree reported an outbreak of diarrhoea caused by contaminated drinking water.

In Plumtree, not only the river has dried up. Water provision inside the village is scarce as well. As a result, residents are increasingly reluctant to share the little water they have.

Missing water MDG

It is unlikely that Zimbabwe will reach Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for water.

Although worst in rural areas, water shortages affect the entire country. According to residents associations Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) and Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BUPRA), urban residents have to live with irregular supply of clean drinking water.

In Bulawayo, for example, residents say they go for up to two days without running water, and when the taps are turned back on, the water is not safe to drink because it has not been purified.

To improve this situation, government officials signed an agreement with UNESCO, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development in May 2009 to mobilise funds to supply clean water and sanitation in a country faced by drastic economic recession.

But five months later, the agreement is yet to be implemented.

James Fuyane, chief water technician at the Plumtree Rural District Council said that poor water management was mainly caused by lack of financial resources and management.

Source: Ignatius Banda, IPS, 16 Oct 2009