If for nothing at all, persons who are visually impaired are struggling to access water, enjoy good sanitation and hygiene facilities in the country.

A visit in a slum of Mgona in Lilongwe, where President Bingu wa Mutharika led the country in commemorating World Water Day this year revealed how visually impaired persons are struggling to access safe water and good sanitation facilities.

Mgona is a typical squatter area located in Area 51 of Lilongwe City on land earmarked for industrial development. Mgona is clearly demarcated by the railway line to the north, Nankhaka stream to the east and Nafisi stream to the south.

The population is about 14,333. According to Lilongwe City figures, Mgona has a household size of 3.3, and therefore 4,355 households of mainly single families as most of the residents are labourers at the Kanengo (Area 29) and Area 28 industrial sites.

Mountain to climb

“To access safe water is not easy for me because I depend on someone to lead me to a water point,” said Liver Aironi, 23, a visually impaired person from Bvumbwe in Thyolo but residing in Mgona Township, adding that accessing toilet facilities is also a mountain to climb.

“The toilet has no facilities for people with special needs like me. For example, a toilet for people like us is supposed to have some facilities to enable us easily get into it to ease ourselves,” he said.

Aironi disclosed that to get to the toilet he relies on another person to guide him.

Just like Airon, Tamanyawaka Pota is a very old woman, who does not even remember her birth date. She only remembers that she got married the year Malawi’s first president Dr Hastiings Kamuzu Banda arrived in the country in 1958. She lives just three meters from a WaterAid operated water kiosk but access to safe water and sanitation facilities is a big challenge.

“My husband is the main source of income in the family through begging in the market. As you know that sometimes people get bored in giving you a little something every day, we spend days without money for food and water.

“Sometimes we are rescued by the well wishers who help us with a water bucket, but they also get tired. Due to this problem, we make use of that bucket for at least two to three days,” said Pota, who apart from the husband, she also keeps her granddaughter of 11 years old.

As if that is not enough, the family has no toilet as the current one is dilapidated and cannot be accessed.

“We sometimes beg neighbors to use their toilet. Sometimes, they too, turn us down as they say once their toilets are full, they have nowhere to dig a new one,” said Pota.

The National Sanitation policy’s definition of basic (excreta) sanitation shall be limited to access to a latrine that should be safe for the user to use, for example not in a dangerous state, liable to
imminent collapse or dangerously unhygienic, which automatically show that Pota’s toilet cannot be used.

Mgona Water Users Association chairman, Trouble Phiri, said they are aware some vulnerable groups continue to struggle to access safe water.

“In fact, we are discussing to identify ways to assist these groups of people and they include people with disabilities, people who are visually impaired, widows and orphans just but mentioning a few,” said Phiri.


An open toilet in Malawi

Sanitation vision

The vision of the National Sanitation Policy, with an overall goal of a better life for the people of Malawi, is of a transformed country where all the people have access to improved sanitation, where safe hygienic behavior is the norm, and where the recycling of solid and liquid waste is widely practiced, leading to a better life for all the people of Malawi, through healthier living conditions and a better environment and a new way for sustainable wealth creation.

It is however, silent on people with disabilities, in this case the visually impaired.

WaterAid Malawi Communication Manager Monalisa Mkhonjera said: “Though we have managed to reduce the safe water shortage which was there in the past, we know that there is still a section of residents which fails to access it. These are the people we are targeting.”

A Global Sanitation Fund report reveals that in Malawi only 11 per 100 households have toilets and in urban areas 43 per 100 people share one toilet.

To improve sanitation through discouraging people from open defecation, especially in rural areas, the Global Sanitation Fund has given $50 million (over K750 million) to Malawi Government to construct toilets countrywide.

The World Toilet Organization (WTO) disclosed that 2.6 billion people (or 2 in every 5 in the 6 billion plus global population) in the developing world including Malawi spend less than $2 (K300) a day and have no toilets.

But a 2008 Joint Sector Review Report reveals that Malawi have communities with 65 per 100 and about 46 per 100 accessing safe drinking water and proper sanitation respectively.

However, due to lack of access to these basic human needs, 33 children under five die from water related diseases daily in Malawi according to UNICEF.

UNICEF also uncovered in a survey on Water Supply Rural Facilities Functionality that Malawi was still struggling to provide safe water to the people in the country.

Out of 50,102 sampled Water Supply Rural Facilities including standpipes, gravity fed standpipes, spring boxes, hand pumps, mechanical drilled boreholes, shallow wells with hand pumps, dug wells with windlass, lined wells and other water facilities UNICEF says 33,
148 (or 66 per cent) were working while 16,954 (or 34 percent) not.

The Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) study funded by WaterAid shows that some areas in Malawi access safe water within the recommended 500 metres radius distance for borehole and 250 meter radius for wells and pipes but in others people still walk long distances to a water point.