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’114 Kinondoni primary schools lack toilets’
2006-03-06 11:02:41
By Pacifique Nkeshimana
About 114 primary schools in Kinondoni Municipality in Dar es Salaam Region have no toilets, thereby threatening hygiene in the schools.
Speaking at a three-day conference on quality education at the weekend in Dar es Salaam, Grace Mahumbuga, the Academic Officer in Kinondoni Municipal Council said out of 131 primary schools in Kinondoni, 114 schools do not have enough toilets.
The conference was organised by the Tanzania Education Network in collaboration with Oxfam GB and was attended by 100 education stakeholders from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, and representatives from UN agencies.
Mahumbuga said: ”Some schools do not have toilets and the hygienic conditions is made worse by the lack of water.
The survey conducted in Kinondoni primary schools established that 83.4 per cent of schools do not have toilets and the toilet-pupil ratio is 1:250.”
She added that in most schools in Kinondoni municipality, the toilet-pupil ratio ranges between 1:80, the case considered tolerable, whereby the ratio of 1:250 is the worst scenario.
”The distribution of toilets in schools across Kinondoni is highly uneven,” she said.
She said that due to the lack of enough toilets in primary schools most of the pupils, particularly those in standards one to four cannot spend much time on the queues waiting to enter the toilets and make their calls, short and long on the ground.
Mahumbuga said that a total of 2,112 toilets are required in primary schools in Kinondoni municipality but currently there are only 306 toilets available.
Mahumbuga said that lack of water and toilet facilities inthe schools is not only the major obstacle to pupils in need of good health, but is also the major reason for the pupils’ absenteeism and dropouts.
”Most of girls do not attend classes when they are in their menstruation periods for fear of embarrassment and stigma by boys at school,” she said.
Noah Mgogo, the Project Officer of Support to Education in Primary schools (STEPS) said that the survey conducted in January in 45 schools in Kinondoni Municipality revealed that 5,000 pupils were lacking toilets, a situation which leads to the psychological discomfort among school children.
”Due to lack of water facilities, the toilets are always dirty since they are cleaned only once per day, in the morning,” he said.
Mgogo said that due to the lack of reliable source of water, the administration asks the pupils to take water from their homes but following the water scarcity in most families, parents do not allow their children to go to school with the water.
He also revealed that most girls, especially those attaining adolescence get shy to go to the dirty latrines and most of the times decide to go to help themselves in the pubs, guests and/or in the neighborhoods.
Mgogo suggested that in order to prevent cholera, dysentery, and other communicable hygienic diseases in primary school children there is a need of constructing many more latrines.
”The government has to think of adopting the use of mobile toilets… else it has also to construct many latrines so that at least the toilet-pupil ratio comes down to 1:20,” he said.
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