Some countries on track to meet sanitation MDG

The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho has one of the most sustainable and innovative approaches to sanitation in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Delegates at the SADC Water Resources, Sanitation and Hygiene Fair (WARSH), held last week in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, heard that sustained political leadership, private sector support and community empowerment were underpinning Lesotho's success in the field. Palesa Mofosi, Lesotho's national coordinator of sanitation, told the gathering that because Lesotho was a low-income country with a population of about 2.2 million, it had been necessary to implement a low-cost sanitation scheme. The country's income is derived mainly from textile exports and royalties on water transferred to South Africa from the Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme. Lesotho had managed to improve its sanitation coverage from 15 percent to 48 percent in rural areas, and from 22 percent to 82 percent in urban areas, Mofosi said. Many ordinary pit latrines had been upgraded to VIP (ventilated improved pit) latrines, with a consequent reduction in water- and sanitation-related diseases. The country appears to be on track for meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. Initially driven by external donor agencies, which helped develop the national programme and train private-sector builders, the sanitation extension initiative is now under full government control, with minimal donor input. According to Mofosi, community financing was vital to the success of the programme, as this had facilitated the construction of about 144,000 latrines in a relatively short period of time. Sustained government sanitation promotions, mainly on the radio but also in focus group discussions, house-to-house visits and community gatherings, had consistently sold the message of "improved health and status" to communities, Mofosi said. This had brought an increased awareness and involvement by middle-income households in the sanitation extension programme, while a government subsidy, initiated in 2002, committed poor households to a personal contribution of 50 percent of the cost of sanitation facilities. Other SADC countries with low sanitation coverage had been affected by inconsistent levels of government and donor support, influenced by declining economies, natural disasters, conflict, political instability and high population growth. Water and sanitation schemes involving community participation had, therefore, not received sufficient priority. Sanitation coverage in Mozambique, Angola and Namibia stood at less than 32 percent in 2002, and sanitation improvement rates for all three were among the lowest in the world, according to the MDG Mid-Assessment Report for the period 1990-2002. In South Africa, since the democratic elections in 1994, the government had undertaken one of the fastest and largest water and sanitation extension programmes in Africa, providing infrastructure to over 9 million people in less than 10 years. Although some had questioned the sustainability of a "free" service that was almost entirely government-funded and involved little contribution from communities, South Africa was still on track for achieving the MDG goal. However, a number of lower-income SADC countries were unlikely to do so without massive external support. Previously extensive donor participation in water and sanitation measures in Zimbabwe had been scaled back from about 2000, due to concern over human rights and governance issues. Sanitation coverage was presently at 38 percent. Although donors to Mozambique had supported sanitation extension programmes, this had not necessarily led to accelerated service delivery. "The donors have money, but bureaucracy is such that it can take up to one year for them to release [these funds]. In the meantime, there is no development," Francisca Muluana, of the Mozambique government's water and sanitation unit, told IRIN. The Lesotho programme has, however, been hampered by the absence of an economical method of emptying pit latrines, which becomes necessary after about 15 years of use, Mofosi said. A relatively expensive option has been the tank suction system, which was a drain on the national budget, or the less popular option of shutting down the latrine and opening another. According to George Nhunhama, a Zimbabwean water and sanitation official, a new and improved ecological VIP system that allowed waste matter to be emptied periodically at no cost, using an opening at the back of the latrine, was extremely popular in South Africa and being tested in SADC countries. The new latrines could last "a lifetime" because they consist of two compartments - "when one compartment is full, you use the other one, [then] empty the matter in the first one after six months when it has fully decomposed," Nhunhama explained. He said the waste could be used as manure for vegetable gardens, but noted that concern had been expressed in some countries about the hygienic consequences of using decomposed faecal matter in this way.