Liberia: No relief as most Monrovians go without toilets

December 30, 2008 · Leave a Comment

With just one in 25 Liberians having access to a toilet, most [practice open defecation].

Liberia's 3.5 million people share just 19,690 toilets, according to a government water and sanitation sector assessment from October 2008, and fewer than one in three Liberians have access to safe drinking water, according to the head of Liberia's Water and Sewer Corporation, Hun-Bu Tulay.

Poor water and sanitation infrastructure contributes to high child deaths from malaria and diarrhoea, which kill 42 percent and 22 percent of Liberian children under age five, respectively, according to the NGO members of the water and sanitation or 'WASH' consortium in Liberia.

[...] Congested housing, no requirement that landlords provide working toilets, and virtually no urban planning have combined to create lethal sanitation conditions in the capital, [WASH consortium advocacy manager Muyatwa Sitali] Sitali said.

[...] In the Monrovia neighbourhood of West Point up to 70,000 people share 32 public washrooms which have four functioning toilets among them. "And this is one of the better managed water and sanitation areas in the capital," Sitali said.

The decrepit infrastructure means toilet-users may have to use up to four gallons of water each time they flush, according to civil servant Florence Nimely, who lives in the city-centre. "At US 25 cents a gallon, for some it is a choice between flushing and affording to buy food at the end of the day," Nimely said.

[...] "When some of my neighbours defecate they cannot get enough water to flush their toilets, so they sometimes throw the faeces around the place, exposing us all to health hazards," Monrovia shopkeeper Samuel Tweh told IRIN.

[...] The government needs US$143 million to revitalise the water and sanitation network, according to the latest poverty reduction strategy issued at an April 2008 Liberia donor conference in Bonn, Germany, but as of May 2008 just $57.5 million had been committed.

[...] The Liberian government recently launched its 2008-2011 sanitation management programme, which aims to deliver clean water to half of Monrovia's residents by 2011, and improve access across all 15 regions.

WASH consortium members Oxfam GB, Concern, Tearfund, Action Contre La Faim, and Solidarité plan to help the government reach its goals, with funding from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), the European Union's humanitarian branch, ECHO, and Irish Aid. UNICEF and the African Development Bank are also providing assistance.

Source: IRIN, 19 Nov 2008