WASH

The current poor water, sanitation and hygiene situation in Tanzania leads to disease and loss of life, increased workload on poor women and children, loss of rights and dignity, economic loss and hindrance to development. Specifically, there is declining access to clean and safe water, inadequate access to improved sanitation, and poor hygiene practices in communities. Access to water and sanitation in schools and health facilities is particularly dire; whilst hygiene practices are inadequate. There is also insufficient coordination, emergency preparedness and response capacity in the WASH sector nationally. The distribution of water resources for community development is still highly inequitable and present systems are proving difficult to maintain and sustain financially.

The main barriers to achieving MDG 7 (environmental sustainability; sustained access to drinking water and basic sanitation) is low political status, with very limited financial resources being allocated to sanitation and hygiene proportionate to the high negative impact of poor sanitation and hygiene on under five morbidity and mortality. The inter sectoral nature of sanitation and hygiene and school WASH are further challenges given weak MDA coordination with no clear financing channels for scaled up programmes. Finances for water supply are not able to keep pace with population growth, with the situation compounded by high dysfunctionality rates but limited attention to sustainability of water supplies. In Zanzibar, there is a high reliance on the Treasury to subsidise supplies thus undermining sustainability of the Zanzibar Water Authority (ZAWA). Coordination across the sectors represented by different Ministries, emergency WASH preparedness and  he quality of emergency WASH responses have also been poor.

The main WASH related capacity gaps to address include: weak coordination and limited resources leverage for sanitation, hygiene, school WASH and emergency WASH; limited clarity on funding and management mechanisms for scale up programmes; lack of harmonization of sanitation and hygiene approaches and school WASH; and limited knowledge on household water treatment and safe storage.

ZAWA's weak financial management systems and high levels of non-revenue water, weak environmental health impact-assessment skills and water resources monitoring capacities are of substantial concern. Nationally, the WASH sector possesses weak M&E systems, with limited evidence based data collection and poor skills in analysis and documentation required for further advocacy. Capacity to evaluate equity issues and concerns, whilst engaging and targeting the needs of the most vulnerable, also requires substantial attention Along with capacity building for advocacy amongst CSOs and the main WASH sector CSO networks.