Harriette's Highlights: Wednesday 19 August

The World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden entered its third day with less zest but definitely with an equal number of seminars, events, and workshops comparable to the first two days. As typical of the week, people were seen rushing in and out of seminars and side events which included a seminar on ‘Sanitation for the urban poor” Exploring New Pathways’.

Different presenters outlined some interventions being made in their countries towards improving environmental sanitation.The discussions were spurred by the fact that some 320 million urban dwellers across the globe do not have access to water and sanitation services.

Coming from a developing country, Ghana that has a high level of its urban dwellers struggling to dispose of their solid and liquid waste properly, I found the discussions both interesting and challenging. Urban poverty in Ghana is so glaring, especially along the coast where majority of the indigenous people are fishermen.

Access to toilet facility and disposal site is scarce there and people are compelled to attend to the call of nature at the beaches, a practice referred to as ‘free range’ while a lot more also dispose off their solid waste again, at the beaches.

Every country regardless of its level of development has something that it may be struggling with. For Kenya acute water shortage as a result of severe drought is its problem today. Mrs Mrs Jacqueline Musyoki an official of the Kenya Water Trust,described the situation as national emergency, in an interview for Water Cube.tv,

I also interviewed Mr. M. B. Mbewe, the controller of Statutory Corporations of Malawi about the Malawian government’s plans to improve on the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Malawi.

Barry M. Jackson, the Programme Manager of the Global Sanitation Fund was also my guest on the Water Cube.tv. According to Barry who is the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council more investment is needed to drive the sanitation sector in order to register a more significant improvement.

Harriette Naa Lamiley Bentil e-mail