Kenya Ni Sisi Campaign installs 2,000 safe toilets to improve sanitation in informal settlements
Sato toilets use a trap door fixed underneath the pit latrine to prevent transmission of diseases and help communities to reduce the amount of water used during flushing.
Kenya Ni Sisi Campaign has today announced distribution of more than 2,000 units of innovative safe toilet systems in informal settlements to help relieve thousands of households from poor sanitation.
SATO and Silafrica said the sanitary toilet solution has a huge potential to fix Kenya’s sanitation crisis by uplifting livelihoods of pit latrine users through conversion of households using open pit systems to closed pit latrines.
“We thought the SATO toilet which is such an easy upgrade to convert open pit toilets to closed would help our workers and the communities where they live, because one of the big challenges with low income high density communities is that they use open pit latrine where flies come out and infect everybody with diseases” said Silafrica Group Executive Director, Akshay Shah.
He added, “Right now is not the time to allow communicable diseases to compromise the health of our population. Otherwise we are not going to have healthy people coming to work and Kenya will stop moving.”
Sato latrine Pans, is a simple plastic power flush pan that provides an airtight seal, maintaining an odor-free sanitary system that prevents flies and insects from coming out when not in use.
This technology uses a trap door fixed underneath the pit latrine to prevent transmission of diseases and help communities to reduce the amount of water used during flushing.
The inexpensive innovation designed for low end households has been developed by lixil group in Bangladesh.
“Open toilets pose significant health risks to the dwellers and contribute to the spread of communicable diseases,” said Sato Business, General Manager Africa, Sam Lang’at.
In Kenya, More than 20 million people lack access to basic sanitation, at least a place they can call a safe toilet.
“That’s close to half of the country’s population that requires safe sanitation. What that means is that we need to build more than five million toilets to just basically offer this to this population. Can you imagine that on a day like this with COVID-19 pandemic, it’s much more important to provide clean sanitation to our people,” said Lang’at.
Sato Toilets can be fixed with basic masonry and plumbing skills, and is expected to offer more job opportunities to households to communities in the informal settlements. Safe toilets have been installed in Makueni and Murang’a counties.
Under this partnership a total of 100,000 SATO sanitary toilets will be built in the war against the pandemic. To further support provision of sustainable water solutions the initiative has begun the journey to deploy 6,000 (3,000 ltr) contactless water stations nationwide.
The Kenya Ni Sisi Initiative born through collaborations and has fast grown into a unified, patriotic movement by corporates, organizations, communities, and Kenyans, also aims to distribute 1,500,000 PPE and create at least 15 million jobs by allowing the informal sector to play an integral role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
