[http://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture/Reviews/How-community-initiative-improved-village-s-livelihood/691232-3342162-e0oi8q/]
Residents in the village have turned it into a model area for
sanitation in the Tooro sub-region. It is not an easy task to achieve 100 per
cent coverage in sanitation, especially in a water-stressed rural area.
FRIDAY AUGUST 12 2016
In Summary
When a village in Tooro sub-region decided
to do something about their sanitatiton, great things started to happen
improving the welfare of all stakeholders.
By FELIX BASIIME
We all know it is important to live in a healthy surrounding but
very few people make conscious efforts to ensure the environment is up to the
mark. But those are not sentiments that apply to Kajumiro A village in Rwimi,
Bunyangabu, Kabarole District.
Residents in the village have turned it into a model area for
sanitation in the Tooro sub-region. It is not an easy task to achieve 100 per
cent coverage in sanitation, especially in a water-stressed rural area. But
residents of Kajumiro A village have done it.
Using local voluntary groups, the residents have come up with a
mechanism to reward homes with pit latrines and kitchens as well as encourage
those without to construct them. The farmers’ revolution and Village Health
Team (VHT) have been spearheading this drive.
“Before, hygiene was bad until a farmers’ revolution started,
helping many people in the village, that is why many people now have toilets
and kitchens,” Amos Kyomuhangi, a member of the farmers’ revolution, observes.
He says the group together with the VHT carries out spot-checks in homes and
gives out hoes and pangas to those who meet the mark.
Farmers’ revolution was started as a self-help project by
farmers in Kajumiro A as a community initiative about four years ago. The goal
was home improvement with sanitation and hygiene as one of their components.
When the district health department visited the village, they partnered with
the group to promote home improvement.
Kabarole District has 56
crater lakes but their waters are not safe for drinking. “The biggest challenge
in Kajumiro A is lack of a protected water source. The whole village depends
solely on a nearby crater lake (Kiteere) which is not safe at all and I think
that is why we are still having the problems of diarrhoea,” Tumuhairwe says.
The leadership introduced
mandatory community work every Wednesday for residents.
“We have compulsory
community work every Wednesday. On such a day you find people either
constructing pit latrines or working in a banana plantations,” says Robert
Mugabe.
Kabarole District has seven
piped water supply systems (six gravity flow schemes and one pumped ground
water based system) serving approximately 23 per cent of the population having
access to safe water while 77 per cent is served by water point sources.
Kajumiro
A’ s plan
Olive Tumuhairwe, the health inspector Burahya Sub-county who also
holds the docket of assistant district water officer in charge of water and
sanitation says their focus is to have an initiative to improve hygiene and
sanitation in the district.
“This is not a pilot project, our focus is on the whole district
but Rwimi came out the best. We got the idea from the district planning meeting
on health,” Tumuhairwe says, adding:
“In Rwimi and Bukuku sub-counties the
district spent Shs21m between 2013 and 2014.
She says when they rolled out, Kajumiro A had 64 per cent latrine
coverage and handwashing was far below 30 per cent.
“We sensitised the community about the need for sanitation and
hygiene and we saw that at the end of the implementation period of 12 months
(July 2013 to June 2014), Kajumiro A village had improved latrine coverage from
64 to about 98 per cent and handwashing had also improved from below 30 up to
98 per cent.”
The health department empowered the local communities and local
leaders to do follow-ups in the village.
Tumuhairwe explains that although there were village groups, they
did not have enough knowledge to monitor, do home visits and the health
assistant would give them technical guidance.
She credits Farmers’ Revolution for being vigilant. “We empowered
the local leaders with a police post in the area to arrest family heads whose
homes did not have latrines.
“The crime preventers do not allow idlers in trading centres
before 12pm. All people must be at work in their plantations because a poor
community cannot be hygienic,” Robert Mugabe, the Rwimi Sub-county chief says.
“The revolutionary groups move around the homesteads and every
Monday they report to us the defaulters and it is these reports that we use for
our action plan,” Mugabe says.
“I think we are going to take it as a learning area for other
areas so that their best practices can be duplicated in the whole district,”
Tumuhairwe says.
The parameters
According to Sarah Kobusingye, the health inspector Bunyangabu,
there are several parameters the district health department considers before
awarding marks. “We examine the home, whether there are regular repairs, if the
house is clean, if it is a kitchen it must have a smoke escape, a raised fire
place, how utensils inside a cupboard are arranged,” Kobusingye says.
“We look at the pit latrines, it must have enough height, 15
meters deep and it must be closed, roofed with a door and must have a hand
washing facility outside,” she adds.
Water source, a big challenge
“In 2013, there was one case of diarrhoea from that village, in
2014-2015 we registered three cases, two cases of suspected typhoid and five
cases of intestinal worms was recorded at Kakinga Health Centre III,” Olive
Tumuhairwe adds.
The health department encourages people to boil all drinking
water from the crater lake and also to use permanent structures for latrines.
“We encourage them to harvest rainwater and a few individuals
have put up tanks,” she adds.
Team work
The community is also focusing on improving literacy. “We are
also focusing on education. Every child in this village must go to school
because there is no way such programmes can be implemented without an educated
community, and we cannot achieve all this with a community degrading the
environment,” adds Mugabe.
“You cannot achieve better sanitation and hygiene with people
who are hungry or in a family with low domestic income so we support domestic
projects. Rwimi is known countrywide for high production of rice, maize and
vanilla.”
Perhaps, this multi-faceted approach is one of the reasons the
village is thriving. Robert Onzia, the health assistant, Rwimi Sub-county, sums
it nicely, “though we are no where we want to be as a village, we certainly
rejoice for the leaps we have taken”.
About Kabarole district
Kabarole District has a population of 433,200, of this 86 per
cent have access to safe water. The majority, 78 per cent, use water point
supply facilities, mainly shallow wells. Seven piped systems (six gravity flow
schemes and one pumped ground water system) serve approximately 23 per cent of
the population.
According to the Ministry of Water and Environment data on
performance of districts on golden indicators in 2014, the level of access to
safe water in rural Kabarole was 86 per cent.
Kabarole District has a poor ground water potential, especially
in Rwimi, Kasenda and Kibiito sub-counties. According to Nathan Mugabe, the
assistant engineering officer at the district, in these areas, when you
construct a shallow well or borehole it dries up within a short time.
The access rates vary from 69 per cent in Rwimi Sub-county to 95
per cent in Buheesi, Kisomoro, Bukuku, Busoro, Hakibaale, Karambi, Mugusu and
Ruteete sub-counties. The functionality rate in urban and rural areas is 76 per
cent and 77 per cent, respectively.
Kabarole District has 1,888 total domestic water points
including bore holes, shallow wells of which 84 have been non-functional for
more than five years and are considered abandoned.
The main water supply technology is the shallow well.
