Act now to end unequal access to water

It is not unusual to hear stories of families in Nairobi who, due to high costs and erratic supply of water, have resulted to taking showers thrice a week, flashing toilets once a day and washing clothes only if necessary. In the city of Nairobi, it is also not unusual to see cart vendors with 20 litre Jerricans supply water even in suburbs. The cost of water has become unaffordable especially in areas where supply is low a Jerrican retails at averagely Sh50. There is no dignity in living like this where access and affordability of public essential goods like water is a myth. This is definitely not what Article 43 of the Constitution is all about.

The world commemorated the World Water Day yesterday with the theme “Leaving no one behind.” This is the principle and central promise of agenda 2030. As this unfolds, the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP 2017) report by World Health Organisation and Unicef on progress towards water, sanitation and hygiene indicates that 844 million people still lack basic drinking water services, 263 million people spent more than 30 minutes per round trip to collect water from a safe source and 159 million still collect drinking water directly from surface water sources (unimproved or unsafe) of which 58 per cent is from Sub-Saharan Africa.