Opinion
LAST week, Africa was commemorating her attainment of political freedom – freedom that entails the right of the peoples of the continent to govern themselves. This memorable achievement is expected to culminate in various other freedoms such as freedom from hunger, diseases and ignorance.
Sadly, these are vices still ravaging the continent and collective efforts and sacrifices such as the ones exhibited towards the fight for political freedom are required. It is disheartening, for instance, that countries such as Zambia should continue losing people – dying from water-borne diseases such as cholera.
The problem of cholera in Zambia is well known, so are the causes and solutions. To start with, most reported cases in Zambia are from peri-urban areas of Lusaka. There are 26 peri-urban areas in Lusaka district and most of them produce cholera patients, and regrettably lose some to cholera, every rainy season.
The problem is lack of clean drinking water supply and proper sanitation and hygiene practices in these communities. These are areas whose developments were not planned or approved by the Lusaka City Council, therefore, municipal services such as sewer and water supply lines, roads and others are not provided.
It is both an old as well as a current story that some people acquired plots illegally and continue to do so and even build on the existing water supply and sewer lines because their structures are not approved and do no form of town and country planning.
What has caused all this are politics of appeasement and down right corruption. These are vices which are largely self-centred and dangerous to the lives of the people seemingly being helped and benefiting. They are a source of stubborn socio-economic and political problems, for, with time, the culprits or illegal settlers, turn themselves into victims of neglect and play to the public gallery for political sympathy.
The Government has appreciated the problems of urbanisation and has approved the upgrading of a good number of townships in order to improve the lives of the people through the provision of municipal services. What this means is that there will be prior planning as a pre-requisite to upgrading the peri-urban and shanty townships. The Lusaka masterplan is expected to significantly take care of the ugly face of the city of Lusaka.
Doing that will require political boldness on the part of the Government, political sincerity and maturity on the part of the opposition, deep sense of responsibility by the media and self-sacrifice and co-operation by the communities that may be relocated to pave way for infrastructure development. Yes, infrastructure such as roads, water supply and sewer pipe lines will need to be constructed and some structures will need to be brought down in the best interest of good health and quality of life in these communities.
This is the only way the problem of cholera is going to be effectively addressed-by providing clean and reliable water supply and adequate sanitation services and facilities in these areas. Anything short of that is merely massaging the problem, postponing the solution while the contamination of water continues, causing serious health problems and preventable deaths.
The levels of contamination of water from the shallow wells in Lusaka are quite alarming. Recently, the Lusaka City Council sampled 13 shallow wells in their continued testing of the quality of water and 12 wells turned out to have contaminated water. This is simply a tip of an iceberg, as some shallow wells are even in bedrooms and inaccessible by health officials. This is criminal and should be stopped.
Government through the Ministry of Health was initially disinfecting these wells but such an exercise was stopped because it was a contradiction of the sensitisation against communities drinking water from shallow wells-some of them, few meters from toilets.
As an alternative, house holds were being given chlorine for disinfecting their drinking water, which unfortunately some of them were reportedly using as bleach for removing stains on their cloths when washing.
The Government through the Ministry of Local Government has established commercial water utility companies in all the provinces to improve supply of drinking water and sanitation services. However, in areas such as Lusaka, illegal settlements still pose serious problems because, apart from the problem of constructing infrastructure in such areas, some people are even constructing houses on water supply and sanitation pipelines and damaging them.
In some areas customers are not paying for water, mainly because of the background where water was a free commodity. As a result, you will find some people vandalising pipelines, especially just before water metres, to avoid paying. This is the mind set that needs to be changed through increased sensitisation and effective law enforcement. Damaging water supply and sanitation infrastructure should be treated as a serious crime as sabotaging electricity supply.
Let us all fight for freedom from water borne diseases by stopping to play politics with town and country planning or giving an impression that those that engage in illegal development of land are victims when corrective measures are effected.
Above all, personal as well as household responsibility is required through adherence to basic sanitation, health and hygiene practices. There is also need for increased investment in water supply and sanitation infrastructure to carter for the growing population.
Sanitation Updates 