United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Friday expressed worry over the unwholesome disposal of urban waste in Nigeria.
Mr Timeyin Uwejamomere, USAID Chief of Party, Development Innovations Group, made the agency’s concern known at the on-going National Retreat on Revitalising Urban Water Supply and Sanitation in Abuja.
Uwejamomere said improving urban sanitation cut across meeting the challenge of managing waste water and called for deliberate provision of sewerage systems to reduce water-borne diseases and preventable deaths.
He said the faecal-oral transmission of diseases had been known to be the leading causes of illnesses, which could be through foods, fluids, flies, floods and dirty floors.
He said it was saddening to note that only 39 per cent of urban dwellers used the UN standard for toilets, while the remaining population practised open defecation.
Uwejamomere added that 90 per cent of urban dwellers used on-site toilets and were not bothered about what happened in the sewerage systems after flushing.
He said that these activities could result to eating ‘one’s faeces’ and advocated a National Sanitation Policy to address the challenges.
He called for multi sectoral collaboration and adoption of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) to meet the demands of urban sanitation.
In a paper, ‘Turning Public Water Utilities into Commercially Viable Entities’, a consultant, Dr Williams Muhairwe, said decades on, most utilities in developing countries were still locked in a spiral of poor performance.
He attributed the situation to poor governance, poor leadership, attitudinal issues, inadequate financing, poor management and external interference.
Earlier, the Minister of Water Resources, Mr Suleiman Adamu, said the aim of the retreat was to brainstorm on possible ways to improve urban water supply and sanitation in Nigeria.
He said the Federal Government had shown commitment to providing an enabling environment to support and encourage private sector collaboration in the sector.
Adamu said the recently approved Water Resources Policy and bill were being considered in the National Assembly.
Adamu also stressed the need for collaborative efforts by all tiers of government, private sector participation and access to other sources of funding for urban water supply and sanitation.
NAN
