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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
ZIMBABWE:
Pit latrines a health hazard in cities, warn experts
IRIN
News
March 16, 2006
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=52271
BULAWAYO - Zimbabwe's
local authorities and health experts have warned that the erection
of ventilated pit latrines by the small number of beneficiaries
of the country's urban renewal housing project could pose a serious
health hazard.
Government has encouraged the occupants of the 150 new houses hastily
constructed after the controversial Operation Murambatsvina (Clean
out Garbage), which affected hundreds of thousands of people last
year, to build the toilets while they await the installation of
formal ablution facilities.
But health experts pointed out that the pit latrines were not geared
to dispose of human waste in an urban environment and could easily
result in the outbreak of diseases associated with poor sanitation,
a lack of hygiene and access to potable water, such as cholera and
diarrhoea.
Many of the new houses do not even have access to water, and the
capital, Harare, is already battling an outbreak of cholera, which
has claimed more than 20 lives this year.
Urban councils have also objected to the construction of the pit
latrines.
"Government and the housing ministry have said it [construction
of the pit latrines] should be done and we are not stopping them,
as they will not brook any advice. But this is a sad development
for the country, that literally means we are now taking rural life
into urban areas instead of vice-versa," said Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube,
an official of the Urban Councils Association of Zimbabwe, in Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe's second city.
"The whole process just shows how disorganised the housing programme
is," Ndabeni-Ncube remarked.
Government has defended the latrines as a temporary measure. "We
cannot watch them [the homeless] live in the open while there are
houses, just because there is no toilets and water," said Local
Government Minister Ignatius Chombo.
According to the official Herald newspaper, more than 150 houses
have been constructed under Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle (Live
Well) subsequent to the Murambatsvina campaign aimed at clearing
slums and flushing out criminals, which left more than 700,000 people
homeless or without jobs, or both.
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