Lack of toilets costs city Sh12 billion per year
Nairobi loses Sh1.7 billion each year due to poor sanitation, an amount that could be used to develop the county and achieve many of the Millennium Development Goals and the Vision 2030.
This is according to a Ministry of Health Report released early this month.
The report ranks Nairobi among the bottom counties.
It was ranked position 42 just above Meru, Garissa, Wajir, Turkana and Mandera in that order having scored only eight out of a maximum of 120 points.
“With this, it is obvious that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of the world’s population without access to sanitation by 2015 will not be achieved,” indicated the Report.
The survey was done in August 2013 by the Ministry of Health through funding from the Water and Sanitation Programme of the World Bank.
The criteria used to rank the city in the red zone (below average) included the number of toilets, the number of open defecation zones, number of pupils per toilet, hand washing facilities and the amount of funds used to solve sanitation related problems.
Time spent looking for a place to empty the bowel for the city residents who do not have a latrine or the time spent in a line waiting for one’s turn at a community toilet was taken into consideration and quantified into monetary terms.
People who lack latrines or toilets spend at least 2.5 days per year finding a private location to defecate. “This leads to serious economic losses,” says the report.