KAMPALA SITUATION
JINJA SITUATION
The issues related to sanitation in Kampala are closely related to its topography. The city was initially developed on seven central hills, yet over time the built area spread over to other hills as well as to the valleys in between. The development in the low-laying areas was predominantly unplanned and uncontrolled, which means that most of the urban poor settle or squat in wetlands and valleys, with high ground water table and severe and frequent flooding. The drainage system is defective, which causes stormwater staying in those areas many days after each rainfall. The majority of the city population relies on on-site sanitation facilities that are very difficult to construct and maintain in those living conditions. The most common toilet facilities in lower-income areas include traditional pit latrines. In some areas, their total share is over 90% of all toilets (UN Habitat, 2007). Water-borne flush toilets connected to the sewer can be found mainly in some centrally-located areas and in slums adjacent to those parts of the city (see map). On top of that, it is estimated that around 22% of the households in slums are practicing open defecation (see map), and around 20% use the bucket system.
An enumeration report conducted by ACTogether in Jinja’s poor settlements found limited access to water and sanitation. The report concludes that only 18 percent of low income earners have access to a toilet close to their home. While some have shared pit latrines, many deal with sanitation through open defecation, hand-dug holes outside their home, or flying toilets (ACTogether, 2012).
The distribution of water in Kampala is fairly good, with a large majority of the residents having access to it, although there are some problems that need to be resolved, including the cost and quality of piped water as well as the repairs of aging infrastructure (KCCA, 2012).
5
TOILET TYPE Pit latrine Ecosan Flush
0 0.5 1
2
3
4
km
The Municipality’s stance on sanitation is to expand the centralized water and sewerage line operated by the public company National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) to provide waterborne toilets to all residents of the city (Health Inspector, 2013). The Municipality believes that sanitation is its responsibility, but because of limited funds and the high initial and running costs of waterborne toilets and network expansion, they are forced to wait until outside funds become available. There is little interest in the Municipality to explore less expensive, decentralized alternatives and little effort to use international donor funds efficiently when they do become available. Instead, the Municipality has adopted a slow plan for gradually and ad-hoc building arguably over-priced toilets for a limited number of users when external funds become available.
An example of external funds is the TSUPU programme initiated by the Ugandan government in collaboration with a variety of international partners that funds projects proposed by community savings’ groups (Keene, 2011). Jinja is currently in the second phase of TSUPU and has chosen a list of prioritized projects that includes four sanitation units (Joseph, 2013). The World Bank has emphasized community contracting to increase transparency and community involvement, but there is a disagreement between the World Bank demands and the Ugandian PDA law prohibiting community contracting in projects over 500,000 shillings (TSUPU Engineer, 2013). Because of a failure to reach an agreement and pressure to use donor funds as fast as possible it is likely that the Jinja projects will be forced to use municipal contracting despite interest and capacity for community contracting (Joseph, 2013). The environmental conditions in Jinja make proper sanitation particularly important. The majority of the town is close to the shores of Lake Victoria, with many shoreline settlements, livelihoods dependent on the lake and water drainage that flows into the lake. The Lake is also the primary water source for shoreline communities and the NWSC water supply network (DWD, 2010).
6