HYGIENE: Sewage treatment plants wanting

What you need to know:

  • The city’s known sewage treatment plants include the one located at the University of Dar es Salaam(UDSM), Lugalo plant, Airwing civil aviation plant, Mikocheni, Kurasini, Mabibo and Vingunguti ponds.

Dar es Salaam. Environmental engineers have warned of a looming public health crisis in Dar es Salaam due to the city’s rapidly rising population that has now surpassed the available sewage treatment plants needed for removing toxins from the household and industrial wastewater.

Currently, according to the experts, less than 10 per cent of the city is connected to the public sewer network system, yet more than 50 per cent of the waste water from the sewer networks is being discharged into the ocean untreated.

An environmental engineer and lecturer from Ardhi University, Mr Edward Ruhinda told The Citizen that the city has only 9 sewage treatment plants. However, he noted, that not all of them are operating at their fully capacity due to increasing demands from the rising city population.

The city’s known sewage treatment plants include the one located at the University of Dar es Salaam(UDSM), Lugalo plant, Airwing civil aviation plant, Mikocheni, Kurasini, Mabibo and Vingunguti ponds.

Quoting figures from the current population census, the expert said that Dar es Salaam’s population of 4.36 million people is growing at a fast rate while the existing sewage treatment plants have been in use for many years without any improvements being made.

“….this has resulted in most of them having pipe leakages, and poor filtering of waste water,’’ he said during an interview in Dar es Salaam.

If the sewerage systems is left for 10 years in the current poor state, says the engineer and researcher, outbreaks of diseases, mainly cholera, will likely endanger people’s lives.

“What I know is that the city is in a stage where things can be improved. But the truth remains that the sewer networks are weakening each passing day,” said Mr Ruhinda.

However, the year 2020, the Dar es Salaam Sewage Authority (Dawasa) is expected to increase the rate of sewage transportation from 10 to 30 per percent, according to projections made public at a press conference in August 2017 by the-then Dawasa Acting Chief Executive Officer, Mr Remanus Mwang’ingo.

As the deadline for achieving the goal inches closer, Dawasa’s current administration told The Citizen that it would respond on the current progress it has made so far. But in 2017, Dawasa revealed that it needed at least Sh2.8 trillion to raise the city’s sewer network and improve sanitation.

According to the Ardhi University lecturer and environmental engineer, Mr Ruhinda, public sewer networks are an expensive undertaking, but it is important for sanitation stakeholders to come up with innovative strategies to fix the weaknesses in the current sewerage systems to evert public health challenges.

While the authorities continue finding ways of addressing the challenges, Mr Ruhinda urges the public to focus on improving their sanitation and ensure that their toilets or sewage systems do not compromise their health.

“Many people tend not to show interest in things related to sewage, beyond flushing their toilets. But I think there is a chance for people to participate in rescuing the situation rather than doing nothing to solve the problem,” said Mr Ruhinda.

For his part, another engineer, Mr Given Mhina, said the percentage of residents connected to the sewer network has not increased for many years because most human settlements in the city are randomly developed, quoting figures which show that 75 per cent of the settlements in Dar es salaam are not planned.

“Random arrangement of residents’ houses makes it difficult for faucal vacuum trucks to reach out to most of the houses,” said Mr Mhina.

He noted that the public is still uneducated about how sewage should be handled.

“It’s illegal to dump waste water into the ocean untreated, but how this can be prevented, depends also on how populated the city is,’’ said Mr Mhina.

Explaining further, Mr Mhina said that sewerage systems have to be similar to the networks used by residents to get clean water in their settlements.

He said there are initiatives that could help control poor sewage systems in the coastal city

He hinted that there have to be a lot of technical involvement that would ease cleansing the waste water before being swept into the ocean

“People should invest in gulper pumps accompanied with water reservoirs that help to easily penetrate into congested human settlements,” explained Mr Mhina

“A person living in settlement with good sewer network is also affected by the presence of poor sewer drains since sometimes when there are heavy rains, waste water is likely to be swept to settlements with good sewer network,” he explained.

He said sewer drains should be decentralized and every ward should have their own plants for collecting and treating waste water instead of depending on the 9 sewage treatment plants for the metropolis city.