Water for People has said it hopes that in the next five years there will be significant improvement in the areas of universal and sustainable potable water and sanitation services for people in Chikwawa and Blantyre districts.
The remarks were made by Water for People global chief of programmes Nick Burn on Thursday at Mount Soche Hotel in Blantyre on the sidelines of a stakeholders review forum between the organisation and its funders, peer non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other government departments.
“We are at the start of a journey to make a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on universal and sustainable access to potable water and sanitation services everywhere in the world by 2030 to happen.
“The journey involves fierce collaboration between all stakeholders in all the countries of the world in order to make that a possibility and so today we were sharing with stakeholders some of our work in Chikwawa and here in Blantyre which is perhaps a way which we can get to universal coverage ultimately,” said Burn.
Southern Region irrigation and water development officer Phideria Moyo said the forum was important as it provided room to review what has already been done to this point to map the way forward toward achieving the set targets of giving potable water to all the people in the two districts, Chikwawa in 2020 and Blantyre in 2018.
Blantyre District Council (BCC) director of health and social services, Emmanuel Kanjunjunju, said among the issues that came out mostly from the review forum was that of sanitation.
“You know land is an issue in the city and people find it difficult to have sanitation facilities for every household, so we will look at how we can assist in terms of having sustainable sanitation facilities instead of having latrines that are just demolished once they are full,” said Kanjunjunju.
Water for People is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to providing access to improved water and sanitation services in developing countries. In Malawi, they implement their activities in Chikwawa and Blantyre. n
