Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
Challenges and Opportunites
In Tanzania, access to clean, safe water and sanitation in schools and health facilities is declining. Hygiene practices are inadequate and there is insufficient coordination, emergency preparedness and response capacity in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector. These dynamics are slowing down the country’s development and lead to the spread of disease, increase the workload of poor women and children and lead to the loss of life, rights, dignity and economic gains.
Though Tanzania started implementing the largest water SWAP (Sector Wise Approach to Programming) in sub-Saharan Africa in 2006, funding for water supply has not kept pace with population growth. Moreover, very limited financial resources have been allocated to sanitation and hygiene under the water SWAP and within the health sector.
WASH in Tanzanian schools had been neglected by officials in the water, health, and education sectors. Latrine construction in schools had not kept pace with the increase in enrollment which followed the abolition of primary education fees in 2002. This has resulted in some schools having more than 200 pupils per drop-hole. Moreover, less than 10% of schools have functioning hand washing facilities. Lack of adequate latrines for school children with disabilities is also a critical challenge.
The Zanzibar Water Authority (ZAWA) depends heavily on the treasury to subsidize its supplies which undermines the Authority’s sustainability. At the same time, coordination across the ministries and agencies working on the sector has been poor, especially in emergency WASH preparedness and response. Other areas of concern are ZAWA’s weak financial management systems, high levels of non-revenue water, weak environmental health impact-assessment skills and weak water resource monitoring capacities.
Nationally, the WASH sector has weak monitoring and evaluation systems, with limited evidence based data collection and poor analysis and documentation, all important for improved sector advocacy. Capacity to evaluate equity issues also requires attention as well as capacity building for advocacy among the main WASH sector civil society organization networks.
United Nations in Action
UN is taking an upstream approach, targeting technical assistance and capacity development to improve national WASH implementation and coordination mechanisms and the application of best practices.
Priority areas include WASH in schools; sanitation, hygiene and household water treatment and safe storage; emergency WASH; and proper management of national water resources. UN has the strongest comparative advantage in all of these areas.
UN’s activities include supporting ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to: sustain effective school WASH, national coordination and scale up mechanisms; build the capacity and skills of MDAs to roll out capacity building for harmonised sanitation, hygiene and household water treatment scale up; strengthen the Environmental Engineering and Pollution Control Organisation, a leading Tanzanian NGO in sanitation technical capacity development; and provide technical assistance for improving monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and analytical capacity for WASH. The UN is also providing assistance and financial aid for the development of a national sanitation and hygiene strategy. Agencies will also build the capacity of the WASH sector for emergency preparedness and response.
In Zanzibar, special attention is paid to building a wider consensus in Government in support of developing a sanitation and hygiene policy. A relatively large proportion of the WASH budget is allocated to strengthening the Zanzibar Water Authority and improving the efficiency of water supply.
Issues of equity, sustainability, pollution and the effect of climate change on water supply are addressed through technical assistance to ministries and government agencies. Officials are encouraged to incorporate water resource management into sector plans, environmental health strategies and environmental impact assessments.
