By Sylvester Kumwenda

Dowa, March 30, Mana: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Project Manager for Dowa Chifundo Mandala says WASH infrastructure must be resilient to natural disasters to ensure people still have access to portable water in case of emergencies.

He made the remarks Thursday during a district executive meeting when he presented the Self Help Africa WASH project progress report to the committee.

Mandala said one of the lessons learnt during project implementation was that when the district was hard hit by flash floods last year, there was loss of WASH infrastructure because some of the structures such as boreholes and the VIP latrines were not resilient enough.

“So, as an organisation, we found that there was a gap in terms of structural resilience. When we talk of resilience, we are talking of structures being able to withstand some harsh occurrences like flash floods which some of the structures failed to.

“For example, we had some boreholes which were submerged because of the floods, either because the location or the structure itself was not resilient enough to that natural disaster,” he said.

Mandala said loss of WASH infrastructure during floods also raises the risk of people contracting water borne diseases like Cholera due to loss of WASH facilities.

According to Mandala, it was also evident that some local structures managing WASH facilities were not aware of what to do in case of such emergencies.

“So, as an organisation, we put it as a recommendation that, together with the council, we can sit down and come up with more plans and designs which can be integrated in our construction works to make sure we are constructing durable WASH infrastructures resilient enough to natural disasters,” he said.

He said, this will ensure survivors have access to clean water during disasters and save finances to construct other new facilities.

Dowa District Water Officer, Cecilia Banda, concurred with Mandala saying the country is experiencing climate change whose impact are the high occurrences of floods and other disasters.

“It is, therefore, important to have durable structures which can reduce the loss of WASH facilities during these disasters,” she said.