Sanitation plan being developed in Kisumu to address emerging challenges » Capital News

KISUMU, Kenya, May 3 – Water and Sanitation for Urban Populations (WSUP) is developing a Citywide Inclusive Sanitation plan for the lakeside city of Kisumu to address emerging sanitation challenges.  

WSUP Country Manager Antony Ambuko, says the plan is responding to the ever increasing population within the city.

“Kisumu is an urban city that is growing, 60 percent of the populace live in low income areas, so there are great urban sanitation challenges,” he said.

Ambuko says the plan is a transformational blueprint since for a long time, the utilities have focused on sewer and sanitation, which is not a panacea to all the sewerage problems.

He says the document is looking at both sewered and unsewered sanitation.

Speaking in Kisumu during the validation of the report that brought together representatives from the County Government of Kisumu and Kisumu Water and Sanitation Company (KIWASCO), Ambuko says the plan will provide a cocktail of solutions for the next 25 years.

“You find that a huge chunk of these people in the informal settlement rely on the toilets and pit latrines, so this will provide an avenue for the exhausters,” he said.

The County Manager hailed the project as a game changer, noting that a well-managed sanitation will drastically reduce waterborne diseases.

KIWASCO Managing Director Thomas Odongo announced that the city of Kisumu has strive to connect its population to the sanitation network.

“In the year 2015, access to safely managed sanitation was at 33 percent, today we are at 59 percent and soldiering on,” he said.

Odongo says the plan will help to narrow the gap since it addresses the whole sanitation value chain up to reuse.

He says the implementation of the plan will involve raising funds to set up a faecal sludge treatment plant and an additional waste water treatment plant.

Judith Oluoch, the County Executive Committee member for the Department of Water, Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change in Kisumu says the plan will go a long way in alleviating challenges faced by locals in terms of managing their sanitation in the informal settlement.