Sustainable Water and Sanitation for Indigent Communities (Implementation Phase)

Around 800,000 inhabitants of the Municipality of eThekwini live in informal settlements where houses are of inferior quality and basic infrastructure including notably water and sanitation are lacking. The project provides a solution to the problem of inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure by providing sanitation to 754,000 poor people living in informal settlements in the municipality of eThekwini in the form of 1676 ablution blocks (for male and female) in these areas over a 3-years period. These ablution blocks will provide first time direct access to clean water for a large part of the population in these areas thus contributing to the improvement of the living conditions of these people. The ablution blocks provide a flexible solution which is suitable for informal settlements. They can be easily relocated to another area when new infrastructure is in place. Due to an enormous growth in informal settlements in recent years there is also a need for sanitation facilities.The needed volume of water for these ablution blocks (32,000 m3/day) will be provided through the reduction of Non Revenue Water (water leakage) also achieved through activities under the ORIO project application. This reduction of NRW is needed because of the scarcity of water at this moment since the bulk supplier (Umgeni Water) is currently facing capacity constraints. The NRW volume will decrease during the project from approximately 34 to 25 percent and as a consequence an additional volume of water is freed up for the new ablution blocks (at a level of 32,000 m3/day).