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Kenya: Whether Public or Private, Policies Overlook Women

by Annabell Waititu, Environment Liaison Centre International

In Kenya, women and responsive publicly owned water companies are working together to bring clean and affordable water close to their households – for the time being.

Domestic activities that use water heavily are within the woman’s domain: cooking, farming, cleaning, washing, etc. Because of this, time women should spend generating income, caring for their children, and (for girls) going to school is spent, rather, in walking long distances, queuing for hours at standpipes, and in other search of water.

In response to this situation, women are forming the local associations that work with municipalities to ensure that piped-water points are established within their reach. They have mobilized neighborhoods, government, municipalities, and other partners to build water tanks, and have generated funds locally for these activities. Water tanks can cater for up to 4000 people.

The Kenyan government is solely in charge of the country’s water affairs, responsible for water policy development through its Ministry of Water Resources Management. The sector has many actors including other relevant ministries, individuals, the private sector, NGOs, community-based organizations on water, and local authorities, among others. The Ministry consults with these stakeholders in policy development process. The formidable presence and influence of other development partners like the World Bank and IMF in this sector have been noted.

In 1999, a water policy act recognized water as a human right and said that the government was fully responsible for ensuring that every citizen had access to potable water. However, a new water policy act from 2002 (in part a result of World Bank influence) recognizes water as an economic good and indicates that consumers will pay for water on the basis of the “user pays” principle. The government in this act has also committed to support private sector participation in the management of water.

For the time being, most water systems are publicly owned in Kenya. Public companies were formed to run water supply at municipality levels. These are meant to increase water availability by two times, increase by 50 percent the number of customers served with an improved water delivery system, and reduce wastage by over 40 percent, without raising tariffs and without privatizing. The companies are local and they are publicly owned.

In the urban areas, the infrastructure caters for the planned, but not the unplanned, settlements. For those in planned settlements, there is access to piped water. Reliable flow of water varies from area to area, and the affluent households enjoy uninterrupted flow compared to middle and low class areas which generally do not. The quality of the piped water is good. A survey carried out by Environment Liaison Centre International (ELCI) showed that the piped water was clean for drinking and did not even require boiling. It costs as little as 30 cents per cubic meter.

About 50 percent of the population in both the rural and urban areas lack access to clean water in Kenya. Those without piped water in Kenya buy their water from water vendors who sell from tankers or water booths. These consumers can pay over 30 times more than the price of piped water, forcing those who cannot afford such an expenditure to draw water from often-polluted sources. In rural areas they get untreated water directly from wells, rivers, springs, and other such sources. In non-piped water, there is a danger of some form of contamination from many sources. Water borne diseases have been reported to be very common and responsible for most child deaths.

It has been recognized across the board that women play a critical role in the water sector. Unfortunately, in Kenya, there is not much that has happened in integrating the gender perspectives beyond an initial and insubstantial recognition.

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