BY KANDANI NGWIRA
09:13:42 - 23 October 2008
Cabinet has finally nodded to the Sanitation Policy, a provision that would give the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development enforcement mechanisms on sanitation especially in the provision of clean water to Malawians.
Principal Secretary for Irrigation and Water Ministry Andrina Mchiela disclosed this Tuesday when she officially opened a three-week training workshop for district officers on ‘sustainable community management of rural water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
Mchiela said although Malawi registered promising strides in the provision of potable water to about 74.2 percent, the country was critically lagging behind on sanitation.
“Although the country is getting very close to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target of 75 percent coverage by 2015 for access to safe water, a lot more needs to be done for the sanitation target of 70 percent,” said Mchiela.
“Only 46 percent of the population has access to improved sanitation facilities, she said.
Research has also revealed that safe hygiene practices have not been adopted on a wider scale in Malawi.
“For example, a Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in 2006 indicates that hand washing, probably the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent water-borne diseases, is done on a meagre 2 percent at a time here in Malawi,” she added.
Mchiela said these statistics show that Malawi does not have complete coverage of both potable water and sanitation services for its people.
However, she said things would now change for the better with the sanitation policy, which would have regulatory rules and enforcement mechanism on sanitation.
Mchiela said the policy would enable the ministry to introduce a directorate on sanitation that would particularly look into the collection of sewer and garbage in urban areas.
“Through the sanitation policy, all responsibility on sewer collection has been wrestled from city assemblies and would now come under water boards in the urban areas.
“On the other hand, garbage collection would remain the responsibility of the city assemblies but they would be closely supervised by personnel from the sanitation directory,” she said.
The workshop is intended to equip participants with professional expertise to perform multi-skilled functions in order to increase access to sustainable water supply and sanitation services.
It is sponsored by Unicef with facilitators coming from Centre for Water, Sanitation, Health and Technology Development (WASHTED) headed by Geoffrey Chavula and experts from Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) of Loughborough University in United Kingdom
Souce: http://www.dailytimes.bppmw.com/article.asp?ArticleID=10961
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