Clean Water, Sanitation Get Short Shrift at WSSD

By Toye Olori

Water and sanitation -- the most important environmental issue for the poor -- is being almost totally ignored, says Gourisankar Ghosh, executive director of Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), a Geneva-based multi-stakeholder organisation.

Some 1.1 billion people lack clean water and 2.4 billion are without basic sanitation, according to statistics from WSSCC. ''This is a lack which affects almost every aspect and every moment of their lives - their health, their dignity, their environment, the well-being of their children and the development of nations,'' says Ghosh.

The WSSCC report cites the serious consequences of almost 50 years of neglect by national and international development efforts. Every year there are some five million premature deaths due to diarrhoea and related diseases -- including cholera and dysentery. These kill more than seven million children a year -- or 6,000 every day.

Richard Jolly, chair of WSSCC, told journalists yesterday, that more than three quarters of diseases world-wide are caused by the lack of safe water, adequate sanitation and poor hygiene. Other diseases that can be attributed to the neglect are trachoma, which has taken the eyesight of six million people -- and is a result of infrequent washing and inadequate water supply.

The WSSCC says that the scale of ill health in the developing world results in huge losses in productivity and reduces returns on both private and public investment. It even reduces the potential for tourism.

Jolly warned that governments and stakeholders need to be involved in the provision of water and sanitation. ''Sanitation needs to be raised in priority. Every one should join the campaign,'' he said.

On Monday, WSSCC will launch its campaign publication ''WASH'', which aims to ensure that water, sanitation and hygiene is provided for all.

Already, countries like Uganda and South Africa have embarked on the WASH programme. Uganda hopes to provide water to everybody in the country by 2015.

In South Africa, where apartheid had deprived about 40 million people of water and 20 million of sanitation, the post-apartheid government has focussed on providing water to poor communities. In the last seven years, clean water has been delivered to seven million people, while the government has plans to reach another seven million, soon.

''But in providing water we forgot sanitation which is a key component in good health. In the last two years, we brought together the key ministries, communities and the private sector. We constructed 50,000 toilets in rural areas last year alone at the cost of 25,000 dollars,'' says the South African Minister for Water Affairs and Forestry, Ronnie Kasrils.

He announced that 140,000 toilets will be built every year in rural areas of South Africa, for the next decade.

But some analysts believe privatisation of water, that has become a major issue in most African countries, is likely to affect its accessibility, especially for the poor.

The General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zwelinzima Vavi, argued: ''We believe water is a basic necessity that must be provided by the government. It should not be left in the hands of private providers. If we do that, we will be giving them the opportunity to fix prices out of the reach of the poor people. We support those who are opposed to privatisation of water,'' he said.

Kasrils disclosed that Johannesburg had been one of the cities chosen for the UN-Habitat Water for African cities programme. ''Since Johannesburg's selection for the UN-Habitat programme in 1977, a partnership had been formed with UN-Habitat between the national, city and municipal government, as well as water companies and communities. Together, they had developed and applied to Johannesburg a model to ensure that water was conserved and managed in an integrated way,'' he said.

However, he pointed out that in the Joburg township of Soweto, 60 per cent of the water supply still leaks through bad taps and pipes.

Seven other cities have also benefited from the UN-Habitat programme so far. They are Nairobi, Lusaka, Dakar, Addis Ababa, Accra and Abidjan.

Ghana's Minister of Works and Housing, Yaw Barimah, also believes wastage is responsible for most of the water problem.

He says recent studies in Accra revealed people were paying too much -- not because the water company was over-billing them, but because of waste in the whole system. More than 50 per cent of water produced by the country's water company is unaccounted for. Some of the pipes laid for water system in Accra, according to Barimah, date back to 70 to 80 years ago and they are crying out to be replaced.

'What we intend to do is to have private sector involvement which takes responsibilities for rehabilitating and maintaining the system we have. Then, government will be in a position to invest into expanding accessibility so that those areas without water will have,'' Barimah explains.
He says that although Ghana has not privatised its water system, the government is looking to get private participation by March 2003.

Barimah noted that privatisation may have its dangers but if well managed has the potential to benefit a larger segment of the society.