SPECIAL REPORT: Tackling urban sanitation woes- the case of Dar es Salaam City

A roadside trench in Dar es Salaam is filled with toilet waste. Many city residents have illegally connected their waste water pipes to stormwater drainages. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

Houses in some areas of Dar es Salaam are so congested that sewerage emptying trucks can’t pass through the narrow paths to reach homes and empty toilets. Most of the trucks do not have long-enough pipes that can reach the innermost homes and empty toilets.

Dar es Salaam. When the rainy season comes, residents of Dar es Salaam Region – nation’s largest metropolis and commercial capital – take advantage of the city’s poor drainage system to earn a living.

They do this by unblocking sewage systems to let the effluent flow into valleys. They also empty toilets into floodwaters in streets and nearby channels.

Needless to hammer the point home, the practice is rife with public health challenges.

Waterborne diseases, including cholera, are more than likely to erupt, environmental and sanitation experts warn.

A resident of the Vingunguti suburb of Ilala District, Mr Aziz Iddy, says “when it rains, there is no way that people will not tread on the filth from toilets as they wade along and across flooded road pavements and footpaths.” Iddy largely attributes the challenge to poor sanitation and related infrastructure.

“The houses here are so congested that sewerage emptying trucks can’t pass through the narrow paths to reach homes and empty toilets. Most of the trucks do not have long-enough pipes that can reach the innermost homes and empty their toilets,’’ he tells The Citizen.

“I wish there were smaller sewerage-emptying vehicles that could weave their way around the congested slums and reach the furthest houses and empty their toilets,” he says.

“This job has been left to labourers who are able, willing and ready to ‘empty’ topped-up toilets by scooping faeces with their bare hands and cart them in buckets to empty the contents in nearby streams, thanks to the heavy rains. Otherwise, they dig pits nearby into which they empty the sewage,’’ says Iddy.

But, when it rains, the waste that was covered by loose soil in shallow pits is swept by flood waters onto nearby streets and valleys where people lie and walk about their daily businesses.

Needless to stress the point, all this endangers people’s health and lives. Such a situation is common in Vingunguti Ward in Dar es Salaam’s Ilala District.

The executive officer of the Vingunguti-Butiama Ward, Mr Zuberi Ibrahim, told The Citizen in an exclusive interview that he has been raising awareness among his neighbours and fellow residents for years regarding the dangers of poor sanitation to human health, with little or no avail.

He also has been alerting the authorities on this – and the need for adequate, proper infrastructure. But the challenges are yet to be dealt with, and the infrastructural inadequacies remain.

He admitted that some men have been emptying toilets by collecting faecal matter for disposal, especially during the heavy rains.

“We have been catching them red-handed (so to speak), arrest them, impose fines on them for polluting the environment, fines ranging from Sh50,000.

But they never seem to care – and they go on with this abominable activity,” he explains.

“We have no alternative. It’s not guaranteed that sewage trucks will come to empty toilets. At times we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma: should we leave these unofficial toiled emptiers to continue operating or not? This is taking into consideration the fact that they are the only people who are able, willing and ready to reach the congested homesteads and empty out their overflowing toilets!”

About 70 per cent of Dar es Salaam urban residents live in slums, or the unplanned settlements, data from the United Nations show.

Another resident if Vingunguti Ward in Ilala District, Mr Daudi Mgogo (not his real name here), says “My colleagues and I usually take up the toilets emptying job in groups.

We ‘dive’ into pit latrines, collect the waste and throw it in a nearby drainage system, or we dig holes into which we empty the stuff. When it rains, this makes it easier for us, because the waste is swept away by the rain floods into waterways, swamps and, finally, into the India Ocean.

“It takes up to five hours to empty one ordinary toilet. After the job is done, we divide the money that is paid to us by the toiled owner among ourselves. We can earn up to Sh150,000 per toilet,” he proudly told The Citizen.

“I know that we are doing is dangerous. So, we usually use kerosene and dirty oil to change the colour of faeces. We don’t use masks or gloves but we ensure that we thoroughly wash our hands and boby after work,’ says Mr Daudi Mgogo.

‘“When we are called to work at night, we usually do not refuse; we go on out there and do what is our duty. But it is obviously safer to work during day-time to avoid getting accidents such as inadvertently falling into a toilet pit,” he says.

An environmental engineer and lecturer at the Ardhi University (ArU) in Dar es Salaam, Mr E. T. Ruhinda, says urban residents end up directing their faecal waste into sewage channels and rivers. This is basically because the number of residents who have access to faecal management services is only about ten per cent of the entire population.

The remaining 90 per cent of residents lack the services – and end up with overflowing pit latrines which they can not empty in a proper manner. Yet, they sorely need to continue using the latrines.

Mr Ruhinda believes that time has come for the country to focus on tackling this kind of environmental pollution through a well-defined sanitation policy.

“When it comes to tackling environmental challenges, the ministry which deals with Health, as well as the ministry that deals with Water, do their work separately and their priorities are different,” says Mr Ruhinda, calling for concerted efforts in raising awareness and streamlining related policies.

“It is through the right policies that people can be guided on how best to deal with toilet waste and sewage systems,’’ he says.

Contacted on the matter, the Dar es Salaam Water and Sewerage Authority (Dawasa) said it is in the process of implementing different projects that are intended to increase the level of waste collection to 30 per cent by the year 2020, barely a few months away!

Dawasa executive director Cyprian Luhemeja told The Citizen that, “today, we are below ten (10) per cent in the level of controlling the pollution.

But, by June 30, 2020, we will have reached at least 30 per cent – and, by doing so, we shall have fought waterborne diseases like diarrhoea in the highly affected areas.”

On May 2 this year, the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Water that met in Dodoma advised the government to implement different projects on sewage and sanitation services.

That was in relation to the fact that only 511,208 Tanzanians have ready access to such services in 11 urban centres across the country. These are Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Iringa, Mbeya, Morogoro, Moshi, Mwanza, Tabora, Tanga, and Songea – named here strictly in alphabetical order, and on no other merit.

That advice was articulated by the Committee’s chairperson, Mr Mahmoud Mgimwa, during the debate in the National Assembly of the budget proposals of the ministry of Water vis-à-vis the government budget for the 2019/20 financial year.

The Parliamentary Committee’s analysis amply demonstrated that the existing sewage and sanitation system in the city of Dar es Salaam is only in the form of sewage collection. In the areas that are unreached by that system, the sewage is removed by special trucks and dumped in special sewage pits.

In the process of dealing with the challenges facing sewage sub-sector in Dar es Salaam, the government – work through Dawasa – is implementing a special strategy that is designed widen the sewage channel service and sewage disposal services in Dar es Salaam.

According to Dawasa information officer Everlasting Lyaro, this strategy involves the construction of new sewage channels.

The responsibility of dealing with people who drain sewage into rivers or drainage ditches is under the jurisdiction of town, municipal and city councils as well as the National Environmental Management Council (Nemc) in accordance with the Environmental Management Act, 2004 (Act No. 20/04).