Sanitation Service Delivery (SSD) is a USAID/West Africa regional urban sanitation project that is implemented by PSI in collaboration with PATH and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). The project aims to improve sanitation outcomes by developing and testing scalable business models that engage private sector service providers and by contributing to the creation of a strong enabling environment for sanitation in West Africa. WSUP plays a vital role in supporting government partnership efforts to strengthen public support for improved sanitation and fecal sludge management (FSM) services in Ghana — an important aspect of the SSD.
Highlighting the important role governments will play in this endeavor, Dana Ward, PSI country representative in Ghana and chief of party for Sanitation Service Delivery (SSD) Project in Ghana, Benin, and Cote d’Ivore caught up with Anthony Mensah, director, Waste Management Department Kumasi Metropolitan Authority (KMA), about the city’s strategy to make Kumasi among the five cleanest cities in Africa.
Dana Ward: What is one of the early successes of the KMA’s efforts to make Kumasi a clean city?
Anthony Mensah: Over a 7-year period, the municipal authority has been able to put in place a solid waste management program that covers its operating costs. Successful partnership with the private sector are at the heart of the system. There are three elements to the program: containment, transport and disposal.
Trash collection at the community level is done by private companies, which charge fees for collection. More affluent communities have household pick-up. Communities that lack proper access roads have a central dumping point where a communal container is located. An agent is posted near the container to collect fees. Community members pay him or her a set fee per load. The KMA did a study to figure out how many loads of garbage are in a container. The attendants are required to pay a set amount per container to the private service provider, but there’s a margin built in for them. If they do a good job of compacting the trash in the dumpster they can increase their take of the revenue. This is just one example of the entire system; the next step to increase cost recovery is to do more with recycling.
Photo Credit: Dana Ward
DW: What’s one of the biggest challenges behind this strategy?
AM: Compound sanitation is one of the most challenging areas. Compounds are the usual living situation for many families in Kumasi. They are large houses, often built around a central courtyard. They may have 5-10 individual rooms, each occupied by a different family. The KMA’s ultimate goal is for every household to have its own toilet. However many households are out of reach of affordable sewer systems.
Many different schemes have been tried in the past to provide household toilets, though none with widespread success. Most of these have involved donor subsidies, and when the project ended, subsidies and growth also finished. Other schemes have provided different incentive packages, but have also been unsuccessful at achieving widespread availability.
The KMA would like to be able to provide financing directly to households. However, it recognizes that it does not have expertise in this specialized area, and so needs to form partnerships with organizations that do like we’re doing with Water Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) and HFC Boafo, a Ghanaian micro finance institution. HFC Boafo already has dozens of agents in the field to provide savings and loan services to small- and medium-sized enterprises. The same agents can also provide follow-up on sanitation loans.
DW: I’ve noticed the downtown area looks great, how was that achieved?
AM: The KMA has embarked on a program of street sweeping, to keep the city looking clean. In the Central Business District (CBD), which has the highest population density, sweeping is done at night. From approximately 9 pm until 2 am sweepers, hired by the municipal assembly, clean the streets and sidewalks. The city switched from daytime to nighttime cleaning of the CBD in 2013 and it has been very successful. Outside the CBD, cleaning takes place early in the morning, from 5 am to 9 am. Sweepers for this program are paid through a national scheme, known as Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA). Dozens of youth are able to earn money and at the same time improve the appearance of many neighborhoods. Another important part of this program is to regularly clean out primary and secondary drains this prevent flooding during the rainy season and keeps the downtown area looking good.
DW: The sanitation challenge seems huge, how do you plan to address it?
Photo Credit: Dana Ward
AM: Onsite sanitation (toilets not connected to the sewer network) increases demand for proper containment, transport and treatment. Here, too, the KMA partners with the private sector. The transport of fecal sludge is already being taken care of by private entrepreneurs. In 1994 the KMA had a small fleet of 4-5 vacuum trucks, which they managed themselves. Today there are 36 trucks, owned by businesses and operating independently.
The over 600 cubic meters of fecal sludge generated per day from the various onsite sanitation facilities is treated by a Waste Stabilization Pond system, a large man-made basin in which fecal sludge can be treated, located at the landfill site. The KMA is working with WSUP to evaluate how to improve the treatment capacity, and to add drying beds, a place to separate the water from fecal sludge, with financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The current sanitation coverage has three elements: sewerage, public toilets and onsite sanitation. Approximately 10% of the population has access to a municipal sewerage system. Another 35% rely on public toilets and around 25% of households currently have a toilet connected to a septic tank system while another 25% depend on various onsite sanitation facilities. All options have their unique challenges. To achieve this KMA will be creating a sanitation plan with technical assistance from WSUP.
DW: I’ve heard you say its not just about the infrastructure, can you elaborate?
AM: Sanitation infrastructure is necessary but not sufficient to ensuring use of improved toilets. If people don’t realize the importance of using toilets, or aren’t willing to contribute financially, then the system won’t work. Beneficiaries need to be motivated to use toilets and to be willing to pay for sanitation products and services. Thus the “software” or people’s attitudes and behaviors towards sanitation, are as important at the “hardware,” or technical solutions. The Environmental Health Department is working on this.
DW: Tell us how law is another part of the sanitation solution
AM: Sometimes simple motivation is not enough. If changing behaviors through communication campaigns is the carrot, legal recourse is the stick that can help spur on adoption of improved sanitation. The city of Accra established a court that focuses on sanitation issues, and Kumasi followed suit in 2015. It has also created new laws requiring landlords to provide toilets, which is especially important in compound living situations.
As I mentioned earlier, compound living increases the challenge of providing toilets. In the past, the compound may have belonged to a single, extended family. When the head of household died, the large house might be inherited by several children, some of whom might choose to live there, and others who might leave and rent out their rooms. Legal challenges to who actually owns the rooms are common. Decision making about whether to build toilets, who should pay for construction, who is responsible for septic tank emptying, and who should clean the toilets is greatly complicated when there are multiple owners of a single building, and a mix of owners and tenants living there. Invoking the law and requiring that tough decisions be made regarding toilets may ultimately be the best way to increase their availability at the household level.
Photo Credit (above): Wikipedia Commons