By Saumu Mwalimu
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. With only 10 per cent of Dar es Salaam residents connected to the central sewerage system, concern is growing that lack of a crucial wastewater management system is posing a serious public health hazard.
The big question many are asking is: where does the remaining 90 per cent of the domestic wastewater disposed of in Dar es Salaam go?
A two-week survey by The Citizen on Saturday reveals worrying practices, like that of residents disposing waste from their toilets into rivers, streams and stormwater drainage channels.
Households in Mikocheni A, Buguruni, Manzese, Tandika, Tandale, Mbagala, Mwananyamala and Sinza, to mention but a few, connect their waste water to streams that flow close to their houses whenever it rains.
Public health experts and local leaders believe that lack of proper sanitation is to blame for most of the cholera and waterborne disease cases.
“The sewerage system is very bad here, with everyday septic systems overflowing,” said Mikocheni A division executive officer, Ms Zamda Chia.
She says most residents are not connected to the sewerage system. “They direct sewerage to the road and rivulets,” she says.
Dr Jackson Mugyabuso, the TB and HIV coordinator of Coast Region said that from his experience, the poor sewerage system has subjected many people not only in Dar es Salaam but other regions to common diseases like malaria, typhoid, amoeba and diarrhoea.
“The worst thing about this is that today there is a large number of people with chronic typhoid, malaria and some waterborne diseases because even after treatment, many go back in their homes to use the same contaminated water,” he told The Citizen on Saturday.
It emerged this week that not only people living in low income areas are troubled with the sanitation problem.
On Thursday, deputy minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office (Environment) Charles Kitwanga, directed the National Environment Management Council (NEMC) to two famous Dar es Salaam beach hotels, Double Tree and Giraffe, to check out their waste management situation.
The minister saw for himself how the big hotels discharged affluent into the sea.
At the Giraffe, the minister expressed dissatisfaction over how the hotel managed sewerage and ordered NEMC to do more inspections.
According to the Dar es Salaam City Environmental Outlook 2011 Report by the Vice President’s Office (Division of Environment), which, among other things, analyses the need to safeguard the environment, onsite sanitation in the form of pit latrines and septic tanks is the dominant sanitation service in Dar es Salaam.
The document says this is the kind of service used by about 90 per cent of the population while the remaining 10 per cent is served by a sewerage system.
The document also indicates that the sewerage network is often overwhelmed and effluent can be found overflowing in different parts of the city.
Sludge from septic tanks is withdrawn using vacuum trucks and is discharged into wastewater stabilisation ponds, it says.
Most areas including much of the city centre don’t have formal stormwater drainage systems. Where there is sewer but no stormwater drainage, the sewers become overloaded whenever it rains, and where there are drainage channels but no sanitary sewers, the drains are frequently used for waste water which, therefore, reaches the natural drainage system without treatment.
It says wastewater from households is indiscriminately discharged into rivers and streams, causing pollution. Pit latrines and septic tanks threaten the groundwater with pollution, it says.
Today, it only needs a ten-minute rain in Dar es Salaam to expose the hopeless of drainage system in the city’s central business area.
“This has been our complaint year in, year out; but we are yet to see any serious action to address this problem,” says Upanga East resident, Mr Karim Abdulaziz.
The report further notes that pit latrines and septic tanks are threatening the groundwater with pollution.
The existing sewerage systems served by 15 pump stations, 9 systems discharging into waste stabilisation ponds and the remaining which serve the city centre, Kariakoo, Upanga and Muhimbili, discharge directly into the Indian Ocean through a sea outfall.
A health officer working with Municipal Council, Mr Ally Adinani, admits that sewerage system is overwhelmed.
“The sewerage infrastructure was constructed when the population of the city was less than a half a million people, and now we are nearly 4.5 million but still depend on the same system,” he says, adding:
“So it is not surprising to find that to keep the city clean is very challenging because the system sometimes is not supportive. People resort to simple ways to discharge the domestic waste even at the expense of their health.”
The NEMC director of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, Dr Robert Ntakamulenga, said collecting solid and liquid waste was one of the biggest challenges environmentalists and local governments were facing.He said the government has developed a Sewerage Master Plan for big cities including Dar es Salaam with the support of Korea.
Source: The Citiz |
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