Charity Muyumbana, 45, is a Kanyama resident, who has spent her entire adult life in this sprawling township. She is one of the more than 400,000 inhabitants who have experienced first hand the hardships that come with recurrent flooding. Charity says water and sanitation is bad in this area, which has no proper layout of houses and roads.

In fact the area suffers a litany of problems that are emblematic of Zambia’s failure to provide safe water and sanitation across the nation: unclean sources, flooding and the bad drainage, poor waste disposal and infestation. While the water and sanitation situation for urban areas has improved, places like Kanyama still afflicted, and conditions in the rural areas are much worse. Only 13% of the population in rural areas have access to good sanitation, and 58% have access to clean drinking water, according to the World Bank.

“Many of us here are renting, therefore we don’t have an individual sanitation facility,” she says. “Most of the people without sanitation facility use plastic bags to ease themselves. They find it more convenient because they do not have to leave the house during the night. Some toilets are up to 200 metres away from the house.”

Residents complain that it is difficult to construct a latrine because of poor soil conditions and there is just no space in the yard.

Litany of problems

But this is not the only problem of this area. Fr. Dabwitso Banda, a Catholic priest working in the area, says poor drainage, a poor road network as well as water and sanitation, are major problems of Kanyama.

“The roads are in a bad situation and the drainage system is also poor,” Fr. Banda says, adding, “A company had started working on the drainage system but the project was abandoned.”

Residents say that the major challenges they have when it comes to sanitation are that latrines attract vermin and overflow in the rainy season. The toilets also “have an offensive smell, they pollute the wells, and that they cause diseases.”

The situation in Kanyama demonstrates a countrywide problem. According to a study by an NGO, Water and Sanitation Forum in 2008, only 58% of the Zambian population has access to adequate sanitation and 13.2% lack any form of toilet. The survey by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) in 2004 attests to this as well. The CSO showed that over half of the households’ countrywide use pit latrines and that 13.2% don’t have any form of a toilet facility.


The appalling drainage system in Kanyama

Amanda Marlin from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council observes that “poor sanitation causes poor health, because if the children have got diarrhoea, then they cannot be at school, because they are sick,” she says. “Even when they are at school, they are not in good health to concentrate in class.”

“Sanitation at a basic level is making sure we separate human excreta from any contact by people or by animals,” Amanda says.

Drainage is important for the mitigation of floods, control of disease and protection of portable water supplies from contamination. The only major effort by government to improve the drainage system in Kanyama, which is prone to cholera during rainy season, ended in a failure, according to a research by the Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) – a network of civil society organizations working for pro-poor development policies in the country. The research reveals that only 36% of the planned Kanyama drainage system works were completed. The Treasury allocated 20 billion Zambian Kwacha for the construction of the drainage system, but the money was siphoned off.

Appalling

The situation is “appalling,” according to a report by the CSPR. “If at all the 20 billion Kwacha which was released by the Treasury had reached the people of Kanyama, their lives would have not been the same,” the CSPR stated. “Although the contractor took possession of the site… only 36% of the works had been done as of October 2010 and the contractor had been paid a total sum of over 4 billion Zambian Kwacha (K4, 061,765,078).”

Diana Ngula, of CSPR says the delay and misappropriation of the funds created another problem for the residents of Kanyama: “during rainy season water collects in those holes, creating a breeding ground for mosquitoes.”

“Initially it was lack of drainages and flooding and now it is even coupled with having malaria cases,” she says. “The holes are now fertile grounds for mosquitoes.”

In 2009, CSPR conducted a research to review and analyse the 2009 Auditor General’s Report, on the utilisation of poverty reduction funds. Digging into the Auditor General’s Report, it was found that the funds for constructing the drainage system in Kanyama were transferred without authority:

“Out of the K9,861,425,640 received from the Ministry in December 2009, an amount of K8,000,000,000 was transferred from the Lusaka City Council… to a 24 hour call account held at Zanaco Bank - Civic Center Branch without authority from the Secretary to the Treasury. This was contrary to Financial Regulation No.146 which requires that funds which are not immediately required for any other purposes should be determined and invested as directed by the Secretary to the Treasury. As at 7th April 2010, the account had earned a gross interest of K56,164,116.”

CSPR is disappointed with the lack of political will to punish wrong doing.

“There should be political will, we should not see a situation where a case has been reported that this official misapplied this amount and these were the people involved and then the case just go quite,” says Diana.

The health sector continues experiencing one of the greatest challenges arising from the floods during rainy season. With widespread poor waste disposal, the flood waters became contaminated, which resulted in the upsurge of water-bone diseases such as cholera and dysentery. A health worker at Kanyama Clinic revealed that malaria, which is the most prevalent serious ailment in Zambia, also had a devastating impact.

“In 2009, the incidences of malaria attacks increased from 36 percent in a non-flood year to 46 percent.”

Besides the poor drainage system, the situation is made worse by government’s lack of commitment to the water and sanitation budget, observers say. Over 90% of the water and sanitation budget is funded by the development partners who include the World Bank and other agencies.

Help

“It would be pleasing to see government step up in terms of its own budget line,” says Barbara Kazimbaya-Senkwe, a water and sanitation specialist at the World Bank.

“I think on the partners’ side, the donors, whether it is from the World Bank, African Development Bank, they are willing to continue to invest in the water sector in Zambia.”

The World Bank, however, commends the government for the various reform programmes in the water and sanitation sector. The World Bank under the Water Sector Performance Improvement Project has been assisting the government to improve the water situation in Lusaka Province.

“It was a 22 million dollar credit which was lent to the Government of Zambia for on-lending mainly to the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company,” says Barbara.

Evans Chinyemba, a Catholic bishop in charge of the Mongu Diocese in impoverished Western Province says the water issue is “one that needs to be paid attention to.”

“We have a lot of rivers in Western Province; talk of Zambezi River, Lwanginga, Lwambimba, Kampompo – all those are parts of Western Province waters, Bishop Evans says. “I think we have not tapped in those resources of water so that we can provide proper water to our people.”

He says he is aware that government is digging boreholes’ in certain parts of the province but it is not covering the whole part of Western Province.

Expenditure from the government on rural water supply remains at a low level from the year 2005 to 2008. This is according to the 2010 Public Expenditure Review, conducted by the government of Zambia, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, Germany, Denmark and other cooperating partners.

Sources from the government reveal that Zambia has been able to show some progress in providing clean drinking water and improving sanitation, however the single biggest challenge identified is funding.


Kanyama township

Little progress

“There has been little or no progress towards the agreed target of allocating 3.5% of the national budget to water and sanitation. Sanitation has always been the most neglected and off-track of the MDGs, with little funding resources or political will to address the crisis.”
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), lack of clean drinking water has repercussions on the right to health. Every year, some 1.7 million children die of diarrhoea and other diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation – UNDP.

Water-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea are major health problems in Zambia. The toll of malaria alone is nearly 4 million clinical cases and 50,000 deaths per year. It accounts for as much as 20% for maternal mortality and 23% of all deaths. Diarrhoea accounts for 6.9% of all illnesses reported (2003).

Dr. Reza Ardakanian, the United Nations director in charge of the Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC), says the current challenges require change of mentality to the way we look at water and sanitation. This he says is because water by nature is a commodity that deals with everything.

“I think we need to work hard to try and bring the water to its position. Water has a connection with agriculture, investment, the environment, the economy, with social life, with culture with religion and with everything,” he says.