National Sanitation Policy
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Date
2006-05-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development
Abstract
The National Sanitation Policy has been under development since
December 2005. It has been developed by the Sanitation Core Team
(SCT), an inter-departmental group of middle ranking and senior staff from
the Ministries of Irrigation and Water Development, Health, Education,
Gender, Child Welfare and Community Development, Natural Resources
(Dept. of Environmental Affairs), Lands and Housing and Survey,
Agriculture and Food Security, and Local Government and Rural
Development. Over four months the SCT has researched the hygiene and
sanitation situation in Malawi, visiting rural and urban communities in the
North, South and Central Regions as well as in the cities of Lilongwe and
Blantyre and Karonga Town. A series of four reports from this research has
been produced, with the following titles:
1. Sanitation in Malawi's Rural Areas
2. Sanitation in the Cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre
3. Sanitation in Malawi's Towns
4. Sanitation in Schools in Malawi
In the rural areas the SCT has paid special attention to the differences
between villages where sanitation projects have been active and where
there have been no projects, in order to assess both the effectiveness of
project approaches and to learn lessons for the creation and formulation
of the rural part of the Policy. In the towns and cities the SCT visited and
researched with communities in peri-urban areas, urban slums and
traditional housing areas.
The SCT has worked in partnership with staff from district, city and town
assemblies, water boards, hospitals, schools, prisons, NGOs as well as with
householders and community members. Thanks and acknowledgements
are due to all those who took part and were open and honest in casting
light on shortcomings and opportunities that they saw in the sanitation
sector. It is only through such transparency that solutions can be found
and a useful and practical National Sanitation Policy formulated for a
better life for all Malawians, Umoyo Wabwino!
The National Sanitation Policy is important because it will help to shape
the development of Malawi for years to come. So far there has been no single sanitation policy in Malawi. Various pieces of legislation, some
dating back to the colonial period, have been used to guide sanitation
development in Malawi. Many of these are now antiquated and
irrelevant to the future development of the Country and a single policy is
now needed to give guidance to all, from Government departments to
householders in rural and urban communities, from local government to
NGO's and international donors, on just what Malawi feels it needs in the
hygiene and sanitation sector to take it forward in the 21st
Century to
reach its 2020 Vision.
Namely: "by the year 2020, Malawi as a God-fearing nation, wilt be
secure, democratically mature, environmentally sustainable, self reliant
with equal opportunities for active participation by all, having social
services, vibrant cultural and religious values and a technologically driven
middle-income economy"1
The Policy will enhance the capacity of Malawi to meet its commitments
to reach its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving the number
of people who do not have access to basic sanitation by 2015, it will also
go further by helping to empower the people of Malawi to achieve
universal access to improved sanitation by 2020.