By Roseleen Nzioka
Nairobi, Kenya: As the world was marking World Water Day on March 22nd, a group of residents from Nyayo Embakasi, a Nairobi housing estate, staged a public protest over the water shortage they had experienced for close to five years.
The residents said that they had deliberately taken to the streets on World Water Day to bring to attention the water crisis in their estate stating that the situation had worsened in the last one month leading to dry taps.
They said that it is ironic for the estate to lack water yet it has three boreholes that can provide adequate water for all the residents daily.
The Residents blamed the National Social Security Fund (the Estate developers) for failing to maintain three boreholes available to the 30,000 residents.
In addition to the boreholes, the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC) had also failed to supply them with adequate water despite repeated pleas from the residents.
The plight of the residents of Nyayo Embakasi was replicated in several estates including Donholm and South C with residents taking to social media to complain about water shortages.
To their credit, the Nairobi Water Company had warned residents earlier in the month “There will be water supply interruption due to ongoing repairs of raw water pipelines from Mwagu intake along the Chania River to the Ngethu water treatment plant” they said.
The water company’s managing director Engineer Nahashon Muguna had published a public notice stating that the shutdown would only last two days. However, evidence from social media shows an outcry from Nairobi residents stating that they had gone without water for weeks and had to buy water whose source they do not know at very exorbitant prices from water vendors.
Embakasi Water Shortage:
Residents accuse the Nairobi Water Kayole Division of disconnecting water in the Estate so as to get each affected resident to pay the KSh. 1,000 disconnection fee; say they have made the issue a cash cow. #NTVAtOne pic.twitter.com/8cyEh72fUf
— NTV Kenya (@ntvkenya) April 1, 2022
The theme for World Water Day this year is: “Groundwater, making the invisible visible.”
Kenya’s new Constitution (Constitution of Kenya 2010) came into effect in 2013, declaring water supply and sanitation services a basic right and devolving key water and sanitation functions to the county level.
According to the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), access to water and sanitation in Kenya has not been keeping pace with population growth, as only 58 percent of Kenyans have access to basic drinking water and 30 percent have access to basic sanitation currently.
The KIPPRA Policy Brief 2018-2019, states that Kenya targets universal access to improved water and sanitation services by 2030, which is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. By 2015, the Millennium Development Goals target of 40 percent sewerage, 80 percent water, and 76 percent sanitation coverage was missed.
Low access to safe drinking water has adverse effects on women and children who are predominately expected to fetch water for household use. This reduces the time available for women to participate in productive roles, generate income, and ensure food for the family.
In a media interview, the CEO of Water and Energy Solutions Company, Davis and Shirtliff, Mr. David Gatende called on the government to institute a policy framework to support local capacity and expertise in sustainable groundwater extraction. This, he said, would boost access to more water and reduce frequent water shortages experienced in major towns.
Recognizing the disproportionate effects of lack of water, Mr. Gatende noted that many Kenyans spend a third of their day fetching water from their nearest natural source leaving little time for gainful economic activities resulting in increased poverty levels.
Away from Nairobi, other Kenyans have a different experience of access to water. In Kathithyamaa location in Machakos County, Ms. Ann Nthiwa says she relies on the family water well for all her domestic needs.
“Piped tap water here in the village is managed by Tana-Athi and is not reliable as it does not come on a daily basis plus it is expensive. So we rely on the water from the well which is safe for domestic use,” says Nthiwa.
The only problem she sites is that when there is a drought the water volume in the well drops but it never dries out completely.
Lack of access to clean water also has effects on other areas of life as revealed by the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics whose report says that 75 percent of the population walk to fetch water, including 63.4 percent of the population spending less than thirty minutes and 11.6 percent spending more than 30 minutes to fetch water.
“The girl child is deprived of quality time for education and leisure since they are forced to fetch water from long distances for the family. In pastoral areas, the boy child is engaged in herding, which forces them to travel long distances to access water for the animals, sometimes getting into conflicts, and increasing school absenteeism,” says the Survey.
The Survey shows that trends in Water and Sanitation spending experience a financing deficit. This has grown over time to reach Ksh 19 billion in 2016 up from Ksh 6 billion in 2012, reflecting a deficit in 2016 up from 16 percent in 2012. This has a ripple effect on service delivery and related risks in health, education, poverty, and gender. The sector players need to re-engineer the mechanism for funding to bridge the financing gap, says the survey.
“Budget execution is affected by low absorption rates of budget receipts. Low absorption of development funds, and low absorption for use of goods and services, affects the development of WASH infrastructure and service delivery, respectively.
“Some of the factors contributing to low absorption of the budget include long procurement processes, delays in the dispatch of finances from the National Treasury, inadequate planning, and slow pace of implementation of projects. This affects the sector’s ability to negotiate for more allocation or support due to low capacity to absorb already allocated funds besides demonstrating a delay in service delivery and slowing down the realization of sector targets,” the survey states.
