Covid-19 blessings: For how long will Nairobi taps continue running?

A heated debate emerged online moments after President Kenyatta launched 22 bowsers to supply water to residents of Nairobi in June. This was days before the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) marked 100 days in office on June 28.

While some Kenyans saw the project by NMS as the silver bullet that would effectively address perennial water problems in the city, others dismissed the move, claiming that bowsers would not solve the decades-old challenge that affects multiple neighbourhoods in the city.

“Lining up the tankers below the monument of Jomo Kenyatta is poetic,” remarked a Kenyan on Twitter. He noted that the parade highlighted the irony of a country that has failed its citizens half a century after attaining independence.

EMBEZZLE FUNDS

Another social media user argued that it was embarrassing for government officials to embezzle billions of funds allocated for construction of dams across the country, only for the government to invest in water bowsers, which were a temporary solution to the long-running problem.

“Maybe the government should have bought bowsers in the first place,” the concerned Kenyan said, as another wondered how 22 bowsers could serve a city of nearly five million residents.

When the coronavirus began to spread from country to country, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended regular washing of hands with soap and running water as the primary way to curb the spread of the virus. For populations in city neighbourhoods that always had an irregular supply of water, following the WHO guidelines was not going to be practical.

Statistics from the UN show that only 50 per cent of Nairobi’s 4.5 million residents have direct access to piped water in their homes. The other half of city dwellers rely on water from water kiosks, vendors and illegal connections.

While water scarcity is spread across various city suburbs, informal settlements bear the brunt of both quantity and quality of water supplied for their daily use.

“We had to intervene because some of the informal settlements had been completely cut off from water supply. Mukuru, Kibera and other settlements didn’t have water at all,” NMS Director-General Maj-Gen Mohamed Badi said at the time.

BUYING WATER

Residents of the informal settlements have been buying water from vendors at exorbitant cost. Private water bowsers are a common sight in informal settlements, which they criss-cross all day long making a killing from this the poor.

By paying Sh5 for a 20-litre container, an average household in these areas that consumes 20 containers a day ends up paying Sh3,000 monthly for water. This is more than 10 times what residents in neighbourhoods with water connection pay.

Sometimes residents have to walk long distances to buy this basic commodity. In this setup where the resource is scarce with restriction on movement as the government races to fight Covid-19 is barely enforceable, containing the outbreak of the pandemic was fraught with challenges from the start.

It was, therefore, only a matter of days before the virus exploded, infecting thousands. A case in point has been Kibera, which has recorded one of the highest cases of the virus in Nairobi.

PLAY WITH FILTH

In Gitathuru village in Korogocho where 1,000 residents live, raw sewage flows between houses. Locals here do not have toilets that flush. After relieving oneself in a latrine, faeces is swept away with water to shallow trenches where the matter drifts away slowly. It is common to see children play in the filth.

When the coronavirus began to spread in Nairobi and its environs, the Nairobi County and the national government as well as several community-based organisations commissioned dozens of tankers to supply water to the populous Kibera, Mathare and Korogocho neighbourhoods.

The Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, Mr Joseph Irungu, announced that the government would further allocate Sh620 million in this year’s supplementary budget to support the initiative.

WATER TANKS

In Korogocho, large water tanks were erected strategically along the streets where locals could access clean water for drinking, sanitising and other domestic uses. To date, this locality in Ruaraka constituency has yet to record a single case of Covid-19, even as other city estates grapple with hundreds of coronavirus cases.

In just three months since taking over four critical functions from the Nairobi County government, among them water and sanitation, NMS had sunk 93 boreholes in different city suburbs to boost water supply.

The project was part of the interventions to contain the spread of Covid-19. It is administered by Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company, and implemented by Athi Water Company, jointly with the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Sanitation.

Today, these facilities are providing 14 million litres of water daily to more than 750,000 residents of the city, according to Engineer Michael Thuita, the CEO of Athi Water Works Development Agency.

In Korogocho’s nine villages, most water tanks were installed by Provide International, a national non-governmental organisation, through donations from Safaricom Foundation. The NGO is involved in provision of sanitation, healthcare and nutritional services in urban informal settlements in Kenya.

TARGETED AREAS

Elsewhere in the city, Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco), a community-based organisation, has distributed more than 2.6 million litres of water to residents of Kibera, Mathare and Kawangware since May, with a daily average of 30,000 litres per settlement.

Every day, bowsers deliver water to Olympic, Woodley, Soweto and Gatwekera in Kibera. Mathare, Mathare North, Mbuthia, Huruma and Top Gear are some of the targeted areas for water provision. Residents of Check Point, 56 Kawangware, Soko Mjinga, Hope Centre and Gatina have also benefited from the Safaricom   Foundation-funded initiative.

Ms Lucy Wairimu, a resident of Korogocho, says water rationing kicked off as soon as the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Nairobi, leaving residents without access to the precious commodity for three days between Monday and Wednesday.

‘‘We were scared when coronavirus struck. Without water supply, our estate would be one of those with many cases of this disease,’’ Wairimu says.

As residents queue to fetch water and passers-by stop by to wash their hands at one of the tanks, across the street, two women wash clothes with water running from an illegal connection.

There is such a connection every 50 metres. Water pilferage in this sprawling estate is as old as the estate itself, perpetrated by cartels in the area. It’s illegal, but happens in broad daylight, costing the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company millions of lost revenue every day from thousands of litres of stolen water.

Here, cartels have, for years, been known to block the main water system so that they can sell the resource to desperate residents.

Last year, City Hall said that it was losing Sh3.7 billion every year through leakages and theft of water, or 40 per cent of the total water supply in Nairobi. In the report by the Water Department, Imara Daima, Tassia, Githurai, Kware, Mathare North, Baba Dogo, Kayole, and Embakasi estates led in water theft.

During the 2018/2019 financial year, City Hall earned nearly Sh13 million through penalties for illegal water connection.

ILLEGAL CONNECTIONS

According to City Hall, these illegal connections have, for years, upset efforts to provide enough, clean and reliable water supply to city residents.

Mr John Wandago, the project manager at Provide International, says that while water is available in most informal settlements in the city, prohibitive connection fees charged by Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company, discourage poor people from installing meters in their homes.

“This is why most of the people here resort to illegal water connections. Those who’re connected to the water system sell water to the rest at prohibitive prices,” he says.

In this settlement, he notes, water is [considered] a luxury, which many villagers can only afford to buy water for drinking, not for washing hands.

Residents were therefore relieved when President Kenyatta ordered the Nairobi Metropolitan Services NMS and other agencies to provide free water to informal settlement residents in Nairobi during this period. While this directive has cushioned them from exploitation, water vending continues.

“Maintaining the recommended hygiene levels was going to be difficult for those who couldn’t afford to buy water, but with various initiatives to provide water at subsidised costs, most households are coping well,” Wandago adds.

Ms Amina Isaak’s is one such household. The resident of Gitathuru has seven children. The household consumes 400 litres of water daily, and paying Sh5 for a 20-litre container was beyond her means and unsustainable.

“Initially we were getting water from across the street at Sh5 per jerrican. It was tiring to walk all the way to queue for water. Having the tanks here has been a big relief to us,” she says.

DIRTY LAUNDRY

For the 20 years that Judith Wanga has lived in high Ridge area of Korogocho, one factor has remained constant: lack of water. With no piped water where she lives, buying this precious commodity has been on her daily expenses list for years.

After Ms Wanga lost her job in May, fending for her family has been a struggle. Without a source of livelihood, she solicits dirty laundry in the neighbourhood to wash, making between Sh100 and Sh150 a day. After buying food for her children, she is left with barely enough to meet her water budget. The tanks in her area could not have come at a better time, she says.

Her wish is that even as more agencies donate more tanks to the neighbourhood, the government would find a permanent solution to the long-running water problem in this area. She is afraid that one day the water bowsers will stop coming and that the water tanks will dry up.

Her fear is valid: will these initiatives outlive Covid-19? How long will the government and CBOs continue to provide water to the residents? How sustainable are these projects? Are they even scalable?

Some Kenyans view the project as a knee-jerk reaction to problems that the government has failed to solve since independence.

“What between water bowsers and piped water is more cost-effective and sustainable?” a Kenyan posed on Twitter.

Also, these initiatives face multiple challenges, including vandalism, particularly because of high unemployment in the settlements. To secure and sustain them, Mr Wandago says that consumers are required to pay ‘a small fee’ of Sh1 to Sh2 per 20-litre jerrican for maintenance of the storage tanks and for the water tank attendants.

“This way, residents will continue to enjoy an uninterrupted supply of water for long,” Mr Wandago said.

On how long Provide International intends to supply residents with water, he says: “Water supply will remain in force as long as the tanks are in good shape and are well-maintained.

“We are also considering drilling boreholes to increase capacity. At the moment, we’re in talks with our donors and well-wishers on possible funding.”