IWA Webinar - Formalising Manual Pit Emptying Services in Informal Settlements

Good afternoon everyone. It's good to see everyone joining. Welcome to our webinar today. Um can see a few people joining in. Um we're hoping to get more people join in as we continue along. Um and as we wait, I'd like to welcome everyone and thank you for joining today's webinar. My name is Elizabeth Muri. I'm the associate director for corporate communications and marketing at Fresh Life and I'll be moderating today's session. So before we start and as we allow more people to join in, would love to make today feel like a conversation, not a lecture. And so while we get settled in, I'd request that we all maybe drop in a chat, uh do a quick round of introductions through the chat. You can type in your name, your organization, and where in the world you're joining us from. Yeah. So you can drop that in the chat. And while you're at it, perhaps you can also say a quick hello in your local language. Would love to hear that. Great. Thank you guys. Uh please keep them coming in. Great. So we'll start with a bit of housekeeping uh for this session. First and foremost, this webinar will be recorded and made available on demand uh through Iowa who are helping us to host this uh webinar and through their website as well as uh together with relevant information like any materials or presentation that you would want after the session. The speakers are responsible uh for securing copyright permissions for any work that they will present of which they're not uh the legal copyright holder. as well. I would also want to mention that the opinions, hypothesis, and conclusions or recommendations contained in the presentations and other materials are the sole responsibility of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect Iowa's opinion. Great. And as we move along, a few things. You are all on mute. Uh but there's a chat box and a Q&A box. So, if you have any requests in case you can't hear us or perhaps you're having trouble uh seeing presentations or you'd love to make a comment, feel free to use the chat bot, the chat box, I'm sorry, uh for you to share in or any other interactive activities. Uh please use the chat uh segment. If you have any question regarding the presentations uh please feel free to send that through the Q&A box uh that you also have on your on your control buttons and we will be able to answer those questions as we move along. uh either the panelists will answer those questions, the speaker will answer those questions and for those questions that we do not get into, we will be able to eventually go back and answer all of them and hopefully avail those ones together with the webinar material. And so a quick overview of how today's session will be, how we will spend the next 1 hour. One, we will have two presentations. one from fresh life which will be showcasing a social enterprise uh le innovation in Nairobi and then we'll also have a presentation uh from Opero from Nicola Opero and that's a utilityled partnership in Kisumu after each presentation we shall allocate about 2 minutes or 2 to 5 minutes of questions and answers for each speaker and so if you have any question while the presentation is going on feel free to drop it at the Q&A box so that you're able to answer that. After that, we'll go into a panel session where we will uh have discussions or hear voices from additional panelists today from Fresh Life Kiwasco, that's Kisumu Water and Sanitation Company as well as hear from Emanuel Pete Mtier. After that, we will have a quick Q&A after the panel discussion uh for about 9 or 10 minutes or so. So keep coming keep your questions coming through the the Q&A segment and then we will close the session uh with some closing remarks uh after that and so just a quick overview that today's session is called um beyond the pit rethinking fol management in the informal uh sector and to just maybe set a quick background across many fast growing cities around the world pet latrines continue to be one of the primary source of uh form of sanitation for millions of households especially in informal settlements and in these dense areas the work of emptying the pit latrines largely fall on manual pit emptiers and unfortunately today and that's why we are here their working conditions are largely shaped by a lot of hard realities there's minimal recognition and the stigma towards their work is very real so today's conversation is how we build around that reality and we are going to look at two examples from Kenya as mentioned from Nairobi as well as uh Kisumu. To kick us off we will start with Wally our first speaker. Wally is the associate director of partnerships and advisory at fresh life an organization that provides safe affordable sanitation services across dense informal settlements in Nairobi Kisumu eldorate and Lusaka. Wally leads fundraising in partnership work at Fresh Life building the relationships and resources that make uh the work possible. So over to you Wally for the next 10 or so minutes. Thank you Elizabeth and uh good to see you all on the call. So as Elizabeth has set the stage very well today we're going to just talk about what do we do with this urban sanitation challenge that we are all facing that we are all seeing because cities are growing but also the infrastructure is not going at the same pace and if that is is happening how are we rethinking how services are provided especially uh sanitation services to ensure safely managed sanitation and this is not just a household problem but also a citywide systemic challenge because When we design cities, when we plan for cities, when we plan for city expansions, what happens to the other people especially in urban informal settlements who are already underserved but also living in very densely populated areas. Again, um when we think about the whole sanitation value chain all the way from containment, emptying, transport and treatment, you want to have a fully functioning system. So for safe management if any of those stages breaks down it means that that waste also ends up unsafeely managed somewhere in the city. Uh in Kenya specifically we have over 10 million urban residents living in urban informal settlements where multiple paths and multiple links in the sanitation service provision routinely fail. That means waste ends up where it shouldn't end up and this is mostly in the environments in our rivers in our waterways. But unfortunately also in the same same communities that these comm that these people uh live in. Next slide please. Um just to um anchor this and we are seeing at least 47% of the waste that is generated in the in the city being unsafeely managed. So this means somewhere within the sanitation value chain the servicing is broken. And if you look at the bottom uh part of this sheet flow diagram, the biggest red arrow actually accounts for on-site sanitation systems. Majority of them being pit latrines that never get to treatment. And the reason for this is because in these informal settlements or urban areas, there's already an existing business of manual pitch emptying because the population needs toilets. they will use the pit latrines and that waste needs to be emptied on a regular basis. And so as we think about these sanitation systems uh we also have to think about the conditions to enable these systems to work uh properly. Next slide please. At Fresh Life um our response uh to solve this problem is taking on a full circular economy approach all the way from containment, emptying and transport. And how we do this is we primarily um pro provide toilets to the urban uh informal residents and on a regular basis are able to collect the waste from these toilets but also not just collecting it but ensuring that all the waste that is generated from these toilets actually gets to treatment. uh uh secondly after it is transported out of these communities we take it to treatment and then this is also uh converted into reusable waste um reuse products that go as agricultural inputs. So how we do this is we do this with fresh life which is the current company delivering toilet access and then our sister company region organics that takes on full value chain treatment and reuse of this waste. Next slide, please. Um, and so as I've just mentioned, our work focuses on addressing very critical gaps that people need toilets. They need safe toilets, but not just toilets. How do we safely manage that waste? So, we provide container based sanitation options to these communities with two different models. One is a shared option called the fresh life toilet as seen in the picture. We do also have a niche product that is designed for bo more vulnerable populations, people who would otherwise not be able to use u a shared uh fresh life toilet option and this is known as the fresh toilet. Designed for household people living uh with disabilities, women, children, uh pregnant mothers and the elderly who would otherwise not be able to access uh safe sanitation that is shared. Secondarily, we also provide a different service because not everybody will take up the fresh life toilet. Nobody not everybody has the space for a fresh life toilet. So what are the other people using? And for people who are using pit latrines, we designed a service and what we did is supporting manual pit emptiers who already have a thriving business where they are emptying these toilets and collecting this waste regularly to have a safe place to actually transfer this waste instead of it going back into the environment. Um, next slide please. So in terms of reach uh where we are we have over 9,000 active toilets operating across uh three cities in uh Kenya, Nairobi, Kisumal, Dorret and uh very recently also scaled our work into Lusaka Zambia and out of uh and from all these 9,000 toilets we already serving over 313 people actively with safely managed sanitation. And so it does it just doesn't end there at providing toilets and removing the waste. We also want to focus on sparing the local economies. So through our toilets, we have over 8,000 fresh life entrepreneurs who manage these um uh fresh life toilets. We work also with over 45 PMIs whom we've formalized and will be the basis of the discussion today. Next slide please. So looking at the sanitation gap um we all know that uh conventional uh fal sludge management is not designed for every urban reality and in informal settlements the sanitation services operate within very complex conditions. Sometimes these conditions can actually change but fundamentally most of the time it's impossible to change them. There's very densely uh populated housing, limited space, shared infrastructure, there's very narrow access, trucks and equipment can actually not get through. The pits themselves are usually very shallow and considering the uh most of our urban informal settlements are in high water table and again we're talking about people who are living in the informal selements but also working in the informal se uh sector. So there's limited access to actually income and that means when you're designing a product or a service for these populations, the affordability must say must uh take uh precedence. And so when you think about these communities living in these situations, it means when the sanitation value chain breaks down, how can we design fal sludge management systems that can still work within these conditions? And this is how manual emptiers actually come to play. Next slide please. The workforce um that is solving access problems. So who is a manual pit emptier? A manual pit mier means a sanitation worker who will go into who will be contracted by a landlord go into the pit and remove that waste manually as the word um uh presumes. So they fill this gap one bucket at a time because that's how the pro the the service can be provided considering the narrow streets there's no access to trucks there's lack of equipment and also the affordability of the service itself and so simply being able to reach these speeds they have local knowledge they know the settlement very well they are they have lived and worked in these settlements they know the structures they know the customers very well they have resilience in terms of adapting to these working conditions and so they already have figured out a way of working within these difficult physical conditions especially the terrain and also the demand that is there within these communities. So their work also proves that households need are in need of this service and they are able to pay for these services. But this service comes at a significant risk exposure from um fal sludge the unsafe disposal of this fal sludge once it's removed from the pit but also the stigma around it are the good standing people in the community. How does the community actually view them? And that lack of formal rec recognition actually affects them to some extent. And so the opportunity that we saw was to build that existing capacity while improving safety and connection to the wider sanitation system. Um, next slides please. And so from our understanding of the gap to designing the service, we started this work in 2016 where we asked ourselves ourselves, okay, we have fresh life toilets, we have a number of people who've taken up fresh life toilets, but who are the other people and where is the other waste um coming from? How is it collected and where is it going? So we held focus groups with manual emptiers and to just understand their work, how the service is being provided, who is the owner of the waste and what challenges are they actually facing uh so that we are able to design a service that would make it safer and more reliable but also more viable. So our findings are also very interesting. The manual pit MTS did not have any place to discharge because before um our transfer stations in Tafresh all surveyed manual MTS dumped the waste in the waterways. The nearest waterway, the nearest manhole, the nearest drains. Again, remember even manholes were not um easily accessible because there's no seaw network. Secondly, they were seen as outsiders because they are not recognized and PPE is also inconsistently used. Again, they were mostly doing this job um uh intoxicated. And so what we did is formalized the discharge sites, provided them with personal protective equipment so that they able to work in safer conditions and then provided ongoing trainings, but most importantly formalized them into working uh and registered uh community- based organizations. So we did design around the urban conditions responding to access which is safe safety and dignity the topography which is the infrastructure next slide please and the affordability of the service because who will be the customer and who is the pair so the model doesn't replace the existing system but it connects and strengthens the parts that conventional services leave behind. So what is tough fresh? The problem remained removing the waste from the pit because that is only the uh halfway of the job that is done. And then once we designed the pit transfer stations, we said okay this is the next stage of where the pit emptiers need to go to connect them to safe treatment and also give these manual emptiers a designated place to discharge but also dignify their work as important sanitation markers. The next slide please. So the work in itself um has gone through 2016 from research and code design to very recently in 2024 when we began mechanization of their work including adapted workshops uh trial the pmping services in different areas with different equipment to just make sure that we can continuously enhance uh the service provision. And uh as I finish the we managed to uh change the manual PTM into a paying customer. And why do they pay? This is what is the most important because we've provided that access to them. Their jobs are more secure and most importantly now they are dignified people, sanitation workers in these communities and their work is recognized and um their businesses are thriving. Great. Um I'll go to our impact very briefly where we are operating two transfer stations and moving over 9.2 million liters of pit sludge every single year which is huge in these urban informal settlements. But most importantly our government and also our funders recognized this as a very key service that has actually gone into our results-based financing mechanism. So we can see some uh interest from funders and uh partners on how we continue enhancing this work. And so what this means is you need to start with the reality, work with existing actors, create those safe uh pathways uh for waste, match the services to the context and then build that safety and dignity and affordability for these customers. So what is next for us is um uh expanding our services into Kibira, enhancing or improving the number of people who are going to be served and of course the million liters of pit slug that we're able to get to treatment but also focusing a lot on systemwide influence where we want to work with others and teach others how to do this and do it better in different contexts. And uh I really want to acknowledge our partners who've supported this journey over the last couple of years. coast, UNICEF, uh the Washington State University, Nairobi Water Government, the Nairobi, uh county and also Opero who are on this call. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you for that presentation. Um I can see Balet Adera saying that she contributed to Mafarafresh and Freshfit work in Kurukenga and she's glad to be here and to learn how everything is going. Thank you so much Adiraa. Uh Wally there are two questions for you. Uh and I just want to remind the audience that in case you have any questions please feel free to drop them at the Q&A box and we'll be able to answer them as we move along. and feel free to continue using the chat for any comments, interactions or anything. So the first question wly for you we'll have 2 minutes of questions is um someone is curious to know what percentage of the independent manual pit mtras are actually using as part of their business. Um maybe I could read two for you and you can answer them together or do you want to take one by one? All right. >> No, I can take them. Uh, I can I can take them all together. So, just read all of them and then I'll answer them. >> Yeah. >> Wonderful. The second question is from Lucy Stevens. She's asking, "With both Fresh Life and Mafarresh, how do you handle solid waste that is disposed in the pits or toilets? What else can people do with waste that they are used to throwing into the pits?" Uh Lucy is also asking she's interested to hear if pit emptiers are impacted by climate hazards, eg flooding or extreme heat. Are you able to help with adaptation and resilience strategies? And I'll give you the last question so that there not too many from Cena. Uh her question is her or she what is the percentage of success uh do you have in the slum communities? over to you. >> I'll take the first four. Um, all right. In terms of the percentage of independent manual PM MTAs that are using Tafresh as part of their business. So, what we did is we started from uh one informal settlement, converted the PMTiS and designed the service or the transfer stations for these MTIs, formalized them into these uh uh community based organizations. And when the other independent manual PTMs saw this, they came and asked for it. So right now um as we speak in Mukuru slums where we work primarily, we have all the manual PTM tiers in using Tafresh because they already formalized into these groups and operating as a group. Um in terms of uh um how we handle solid waste, that's a great question. So that was the first uh landing that we saw when we started uh collecting this waste at the transfer stations. Yes, the pitlerins in urban informal settlements also serve as uh trash bags. There's because there's no formal solid waste management service and so what we do is we save all that solid waste. Um so this doesn't go into the government treatment plant but otherwise we manage it through a third party um dried and then incinerated. Um and what else can people do with waste that they are used to throwing into the pit? Unfortunately, without a very formal waste uh solid waste management service in these informal settlements, it becomes difficult to tell people where they can actually um dump their their their trash from the households. Um to your question uh Lucy on impacts of climate hazards to the manual pit emptiers absolutely they are impacted by the by flooding mostly because the urban informal settlements in Nairobi are in high water table and these pit latrines are built uh unlined in these uh areas and so whenever there is flooding or very heavy rains they have more work. Yes, which is great for the manual pit emptiers, but also the it becomes more complex because there's a lot of mud, there's a lot of u the extreme weather conditions also make it very hard for them to move their waste um into into the transfer station. And so what we've done in terms of adaptation and resilience is thinking through how much we can mechanize their work so that um they are able to empty faster but not only empty faster but also transport the waste easier. And those are some of the of the uh uh solutions that we we've been piloting from 2024 together with the manual PMTS. Um, in terms of the success we have had in the slum communities, I would say we've we are now at least at 90% of the pitler train waste coming to our transfer stations and happy that today we'll also get to talk to a manual pit mier who can allude to their other emptiers uh who dump the waste uh in other uh in the in the waterways or in the environment. Thank you. Thank you so much, Wally. Many more questions, but we will have to move on to the next speaker for now. Uh we can keep answering those ones and the Q&A segment. Um and so next up is Nicola Green, the director of Opero Services. Opero is a Kenyan based wash advisory and implementation company. Nicola has over 15 years of experience across Africa in sanitation markets, enterprise development, and service delivery. and she'll be taking us through the Kisumu uh example, an experience or case study, a city that has actually spent more than a decade building a very different kind of sanitation ecosystem uh to solve the same same issue we are discussing to today. So Nicola, over to you. I'll give you 10 minutes and then we'll do a bit of Q&A for you at the very end. Thank you. >> Perfect. Thanks, Elizabeth. Hi everybody. Um, thanks so much for joining. Um, yeah, my name is Nicola. I'm the director of Opero. And my goal for today is to introduce you to this, as Elizabeth called it, unusual uh, sanitation ecosystem that we have in Kisumu and explain some of the changes that have helped it to advance. Next slide, please. Um, so yeah, my organization is called Oparel and we work primarily to build wash businesses. So reasons for that are a bit personal, a bit professional from a personal standpoint. I just absolutely love business. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. I love seeing people succeed. And then, you know, I watched in the I worked in the wash sector. That was my professional background. Um and I felt like there was a gap for more professional support to Wash Enterprises and and that was the start of Opero. So we we work to build Wash Enterprises. If you do that in Kenya, we have a vast utility and county network, 90 plus utilities, 47 counties. So if you want to scale a business in Kenya, you're you need to work with those utilities and counties. So public private collaboration is one of our big roots of working in Kenya. We really believe that that's the gateway to scale. So I want to show you a bit of how this was applied in Kisumu. Next slide please. So Kisumu is the third largest city in Kenya. Uh it's on the the shores of Lake Victoria. It has a very high water table and seasonal flooding. Like every city in Africa, certainly the majority, uh 82% of people use on-site sanitation. So we have a majority population on on-site sanitation, 60% of people in informal settlements. Sewer coverage is currently 18%, but we have hugely ambitious targets to get to 45% and those are being actioned. Um, but of course we'll still remain with 55% of people using uh on-site sanitation even when that's complete and 62% of pits are online. Um, Kazou is in this kind of great position now where most people have toilets and uh the big question now is what to do with all the waste. uh especially Wally has introduced this uh manual pitlerine emptying uh work that exists and explains some of the issues with that that's especially acute in Kisumu because it's on the shores of Lake Victoria and Lake Victoria is also a primary water source for the region. So we have extra incentive to make sure that we clean up the waste management industry. Next slide please. Um so in the case of Kisumu the public partner is primarily Kiwasco. So Kiwiasco is Kisumu water and sanitation company. They actually shifted their name. I think those of you who are here from other countries than Kenya. uh Kenya had a change in mandate in 2020 under the inclusive urban sanitation guidelines where the responsibility for non- seward sanitation was somewhat transitioned to the utility companies. Kisumu was one of the first to change their name and also to change their approach. Uh of course the budget hasn't followed that yet but at least the mandate and the naming is now complete. So, Kisumu and Kiosco have over half a million people in their mandated service area. It's countyowned as all utilities in Kenya are. They have two waste disposal sites and they offer licensing uh to private enterprises that that transport waste. I think what sets QASCO apart is that it treats partners as a delivery mechanism and not as competitors for its mandate. This is a constant block for us in Opero is utilities seeing enterprise as competition rather than as opportunity for collaboration. Qasco is completely different in that regard and I think what I'm going to show you in these slides is testament to how good QASCO are at partnership. The the work I present is not Operos alone. Practical Action has been there. Wasup, Fresh Life, Sanovation, PSI. So many actors work in Kassumu because the utility is completely open to partnership based approaches. So we have a great public partner in place. Next slide. Um and then alongside that we also have the private partner. So private partner is the emptying service providers. We have around 11 of those who are now considered formal. We'll talk a little bit about that. And about 60 workers in this recognized system. Uh the enterprises were as Wally described you know it was previously an informal sector unlicensed and emptying done at night. Now it's quite organized. It's formal and waste is brought to a lagoon. Um one of the great things we do have in Kisumu is if we have a QIP uh a CBO or association formed by the FSM operators and that's a key point of liaison for Kiwasco. So that's nice on the side of the emptying community that Qasco doesn't have to liaz with everybody one by one but rather can lies with an association. Um per the quote across the bottom uh we have an emptier who said you know I was a storekeeper at a hospital getting 14,000 a month that's about $110 here for emptying if jobs are lined up I can make that in one or two days. So I think that's maybe one of the misconceptions we have about emptying. We think it's super cheap. Um but actually emptying can be really quite expensive. Uh it's dirty work and people pay a premium for it. So actually the money that can be made from it depending on the context can be okay uh depending on the time of year. We'll look at that a bit more. Uh next slide please. So over the last 10 years, let me show you some of the main things that have happened in Kisumu to develop this market. So in 2016, I think one of the first moves that was made was the was producing standard operating procedures. And I love these standard operating procedures because they set out operations that are really quite basic. So the operating procedures didn't strive for perfection. They said, "Okay, manual emptying is a reality. Let's organize it." So these SOPs are very humble. They just describe some minimum criteria. You must dispose waste safely. You must use PPE. You must use some tools. And we got basic SOPs in place to open up this industry. In 2018, the first licensed FSM company um was incorporated. Dickens is on the call. Hi Dickens. Well done. Uh 2020 we had this mandate change that we mentioned. 2023 we started incorporating technology and trials. 2025 set up a depo uh more distribution of PPEs and vaccination. And now in 2026 uh QASCO have an AFTB treatment planning grant to get an FSTP in place. So, I think it's really interesting that we've made it through all of these 10 years without an FSTP. Um, we do have lagoons there and that's where the waste is brought, but ultimately none of these actions required capex and I think that's where we get stuck in sanitation quite a bit as wash professionals. We're so used to capex infrastructure. Sanitation can go a long way without the capex um as you can see in this journey and but we are very much looking forward to uh QASCO having an FSTP and an appropriate destination for that waste. Next slide please. Um, if we look at what formalization costs, so from a licensing perspective in Kenya, again, maybe as inspiration for people who are overseas, we need three licenses. One is a business permit from the county government that starts at around $40. The second one is a waste transport license from NEMA. Uh, that's around $115 a year. I I see we have someone from Neya on the call. You are most welcome. and your name out representatives in Kisumu do a great job in terms of enabling this sector. Uh and then finally we have the disposal license and in every context in Kenya that comes from the utility and that's a waste or that's a license for disposing in the treatment infrastructure. Um, one of the coolest things that I think Kiwasco have done in Kisumu is that they have waved that disposal fee for manual and semi-mechanized groups as a special market startup compensation. So, the exhausters do pay it, but the emptiers at the moment do not. they eventually should, but I think that was a big move on the side of QASCO to wave that potential revenue in the name of making sure that that waste was getting to a disposal site. They knew that if they charged that extra fee, especially because it's monthly, that miers wouldn't be able to pay that all the time. So, I think that's a really nice collaborative move on the side of Kuwasco. Next slide, please. Um so yeah ultimately the utility enables it does not deliver has no manual emptying services rather it enables the markets that's on the ground that's mostly through introducing the standards giving that free disposal access now there are worker facilities kiosk offer capacity development and service and investment planning the county also has an enforcement role they make sure that this is not happening informally or legally anymore. Um, and try to enforce decent standards of sanitation on the ground. But ultimately, I think you success is that they don't try to do everything. Uh, they enable other people to deliver. While I'm presenting this on behalf of Opero, I do want to note that uh we do have Joelle from Kasco on the call and he's going to be part of the Q&A. So if you have questions directly for him, uh just know know that he's also here. Okay, next slide. So for apparel, what we do is we work with the association to strengthen it. We work with the emptiers through professionalization and branding, health and safety training. And we have a big component of worker safety research and equipment testing and trials. Um the biggest ask from the operators is typically transport. So when we formalize emptying mostly people are informally emptying already. The big difference they need is bringing that waste to a disposal facility. So often in cities transport is the gap. So at the moment um we have introduced a truck that we're making available to the association and we want to embed it with the utility. Next slide. I'll just touch on this briefly. OPO is triing different equipment in Kisumu at the moment, but we have a separate webinar about that in October. I'll give you a link to that. Next slide. So, the impact, you know, Kisumu stakeholders have done an unbelievable job. The SFD has gone from 33% to 61% safely managed sanitation in the course of about 10 years. We have about 1,500 pits emptied and waste disposed of in the site uh in 2025. Almost 2 million L of waste managed in 2025 and 60 livelihoods recognized in this licensed system. The graph we'll send these slides around. You can just see that the the waste peaks during the rainy season. So it is seasonal work. Next slide. uh what's working and what is still a gap for the enterprises. They are organized, equipped, trained, and protected, but we're still lacking a service level agreement with QASCO. There's no capital for equipment and customers can't pay the full price. So, we are absolutely not reaching everybody. And then from the utility and county perspective, things are working that we have standards in place. You know, waste is moving and reaching treatment which is helping the quality of the water source. But in terms of gaps, we have no specific treatment plant, no financing model and we also need a contracted relationship with the emptiers. Next slide and final slide. Uh so seven practical things that a government can do. Write the standards first. Legitimize the emptiers already working. Open the disposal site. Deal with associations. Build a wash bay and store. Make people welcome. Govern the system, let other people deliver, and plan for non sewer sanitation as permanent. It's not going away. I think we know that. Next slide. So, just in closing, I can let you know that Opero, our ambition is very much around enterprises. We have a goal 2036 to work with a thousand sanitation enterprises in similar ways to validate this Kisumu model, embed it, and ultimately expand to work elsewhere. Um, and I also invite you to our webinar on the 21st of October where we'll review all of the technologies that we've introduced in Kisumu. Uh, it's fair to say that what you think the market wants and what the market all actually wants uh doesn't always align. So, I think that'll be a really interesting session too. You have the context for myself and Carol and Joel from Kiwasco across the bottom and you're welcome to reach out. Thank you so much Nicolola uh for that great presentation. Um I do have one question from from BC uh which you can help us answer and it's related to your second last slide but feel free to add anything that you feel is relevant. He's asking um what are the roles of local government in supporting this great initiative? Do we foresee a situation where local government can support regulation of manual pit emptying activities? For sure. And actually, it's a good question because the best advice I ever got from that is actually from Wally, who's the best speaker. And and what Wally told me is, you know, the main thing we need from local government is to champion, support, and be genuinely engaged. So, to kind of not get in the way. Um, so I think, you know, they're the most transformational actors. I think that's why Opero does this public private uh work. We realize private can't do much unless public backs. So I think the big role of local government here is in terms of making sure that standards of pitlerines and sanitation facilities are decent quality and emptiable and also regulating the informal emptying and saying hey guys there is a formal system here either use that or don't don't practice. So I think there there is a bit of regulation. There was a question to Wall-E about what proportion of the market is engaged um in Nairobi. So in Kisumu I think it's about half half about half the waste is coming to the treatment plant and about half is still missing uh via the informal emptier. So mostly it's around regulation. >> Great. Great. Thank you so much Nicola for that. Um and with that I will in the interest of time we will move to the panel session. I can see a question for Kiwasco from Loretta. I will hand that to Joel as we move along Loretta because Joel is from uh Kiwiasco as well. But let me quickly introduce our panelists. Uh we have Francis Kuram. Frances is the manager or product manager at Mutafresh uh Fresh Life. He runs the day-to-day operations uh of Maresh Centers that Wally spoke about. We have Joel Obonga who is a sanitation development officer at Kisumu Water and Sanitation uh company supporting regulation policy and governance uh for fle management. And last but not least, we have Joseph Muuri who is a manual pitmia from Kurukua. He's been doing this work for more than 20 years since 2006. And so we do hope that we can hear something from him firsthand experience. And I will start off with a question for each panelist and if there are more questions in the Q&A segment, I will also be pushing those ones to the panelists as well. We will start off with Joseph U Moruri. Joseph, can you hear us? Are you with us? >> Yes. >> Perfect. So the first question, Joseph, I'd love for you to introduce yourself so that the audience can know you. You can tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are based, uh, and also maybe quickly mention to us how many days do you work in a week and how many barrels of pit uh, sludge do you manage in a day. Thank you. >> Okay. My name is Joseph Mor. I work for existing CBO and uh we work every day. Uh I I think we we collect I think 10 10 to to 15 bar and day. Thank Thank you. Thank you, Joseph. And you said you've been doing this work for over 20 years. So maybe you could also quickly tell us um take us through how your work has changed. Maybe you can take us through how your days used to be before MAFresh. how what were the challenges that you were encountering and where did you use to dispose the waste and then maybe you can also quickly mention to us um what is what is happening now now since you're a member of Montafresh thank you >> okay between 206 up to 2019 I I have a big challenge because We we more challenge because we because of the work. Uh the people we not we do not take this job like another job because that time we dump everywhere. Uh and then we harass the people community jobless we to us because >> right uh thank you Joseph. So maybe Francis um we can quickly come to you uh since you run them centers and you work with the manual pit mas daytoday what do you feel are the manual pit mtia's biggest struggles right now uh especially with them and what what what are we trying to do around the same >> thanks Le and thank you Joseph um the current uh biggest challenge for Pet MTS uh in the community is pricing. Uh what you've seen so far, they are still charging the landlords the same amount of money they used to charge uh right from the time Joseph here is saying they started working. uh the landlords currently you can see they're appreciating the services but they're not willing to increase the amount that they're paying per for here they're charging per bar. So they're not willing there is that gap between uh you accepting the service and you um accepting to pay the premium that you should pay. So that's the biggest challenge and it connects it connects um um to the fact that now the volumes are going to part of the volumes are going to back to the streams or the illegal uh tin that pumps the waste into the stream. That is a cheaper option of course unsafe. And uh what that means to Joseph and his team here is that uh they lose income and most importantly the their efforts to make sure that uh all this waste is coming to us is undermined. >> Thanks Francis. Um and maybe connected to that uh and I will merge this with marijuas and and opero for the good job that they're doing but they are also asking whether pit mts face challenges that could be addressed through effective customer engagement uh in order to improve their success. Maybe as you answer that question, you can also take us through how you have conversations with landlords and communities so that then they are also able to support the manual pit MTS. >> Right. Thank you Liz. And indeed that's one of the um areas of improvements that we've made. Initially when we started there was no direct engagement um from one of from from our organization to the landlords. So what we've started recently and it was part of W's presentation. uh we have a small team of uh their actual work is demand creation in a way we go door to door speaking to landlords about the waste that is coming from their pit and most importantly talking to them about the value of having that waste uh managed safely as opposed to having it going back to the streams. and even back to the community. So in two ways we go doortodoor speaking to landlords on a daily basis uh and landlords with people and secondly we also arrange forums with uh landlords uh at least once in a month we call them sit down uh speak about the community speak about uh the sanitation option that they have which is the pit and additionally we add in the local um administration. So people who have influence in the community, they're able to uh amplify our uh voices. Yes. >> Thank you, Francis. Uh Joel, uh maybe I could quickly move in uh to you. Uh and my first question for you is in relation to what Nicola mentioned that you changed from water and sewage to water and sanitation. You among the first ones to do that. Maybe you can quickly tell us what you had to change as Kiwiasco from a regulatory standpoint for the utility to bring the manual pit emptation system and perhaps if there's any gap that you still uh foresee or or see in this process. Thank you so much for Kisumu's case. Our on-site sanitation coverage is that those who those who use onsite sanation systems is 82%. Considering the fact that initially we are a purely sewage company, we had to incorporate those who use on-site sanitation systems as the change of name from sewage to sanitation and this has worked in our favor. Checking at our sheet flow diagram from 2015 at 33% to 61% in 2024 after the governance strategy of embracing unseation even in our strategic plan. The gap that still exists is 39% of waste does not find its way in our treatment plants. meaning it disappears in the natural environment without treatment. And uh we serve a population of around 520,000 and 4% of these 520,000 residents practice open defecation, a challenge to public health and environmental safeguards. But we are glad our partners operating us with container based toilets, hence safe and affordable sanitation for our low-inccome areas. We have opair on board supporting on uh capacity building and mechanization of pit emptying services. And we are glad we are glad with we work with the county government with regard to regulation as alluded by Nicola. The county government is supporting us in regulating fical slide management through the provision of permits and public health approvals and we do tracking forms to ensure the volumes we receive in our treatment plans are tracked and monitored. Yes, >> thank you. Thank you so much uh Joel. And you could also help us answer the question from Loretta H who is asking what is the distinction between the roles of the county and Kiwasco since Kiwasco is a public utility. >> Yes. So what the county does is regulation and sanitation provision of sanitation services is a county government function but this function has been uh devolved to Kiwasco. So provision of water and sanitation services in Kisum County is done by Kiwasco though this is a government function. So the county is our owner and we are the service provider. So as we do the service provision the county does regulation and enforcement but our policies are in tandem. We have the county supporting industrialization and policy formulations and we have our own policies as a utility which are agreeing to each other. So when it comes to fal slide management we are in tandem with each other. They regulate and we do the service. >> Perfect. Thank you so much Joel. Um the next question will be for both you and Francis. uh it's related to what sir Cena is asking uh in terms of what is the effect of improved value chain in manual pit emptying on nearby streams as well as the environment as a whole and whether we have any statistics uh around that but before maybe you answer that or as you answer that we'll start with we can start with you Joel uh you could answer that in relation also to uh the next step being a physibility as as as was presented a feibility study for a treatment plant funded through AFDP and how that connects to you know circular economy and climate resilient sanitation and then Francis will come to you. >> Okay. Right. It's been a journey since we began with formulating and formalizing the premiers 2026. Here we are with a visibility grant for from AWDF to do a physibility study for an FSTP and uh on a monthly basis at uh Nenda treatment plant. We receive averely 360 tons of raw fals in solid form. This plant was designed to handle liquid seaw conventional waste water but we had to incorporate nonse sanitation aspects because it's the mar majority in our city but it has come at a detrimental cost to us in the long term. Hence the need for an FSTP. All these 360 tons we receive are deposited in our anorobic ponds and we have uh in the long-term treatment inefficiencies and uh nonconformance in terms of uh the effluent we release to the lake. So the essence of FSTP is to convert this 360 ts we receive into waste to value options and create green jobs which are environmentally friendly and having public health safeguards. So we intend to do a study on how we can convert all this raw material, the 360 tons of raw solid sludge into brickets, in organic fertilizer, soil conditioners, BSFs and this water that we release to the lake, we can use it for irrigation. So the essence of this is also to have some climate release resilience because uh we can control and controlled dumping of these waters to the lake Victoria and we also have uh an opportunity to do carbon reduction because the emission of uh methane through this FSTP conversion will be reducing these gases into the natural environment and thus having some uh base for carbon credit funding. So FSTP is to link circular economy and climate resilience. Yes, >> thank you. Thank you so much Joel and Francis in under a minute maybe you can also remion or let us know how much waste we have discharged through Tarresh uh so far and perhaps the same way uh how does this affect the environment in the communities that you operate in and where you see the clearest opportunities in three quarter of a minute >> uh thank you Liz I think just to mention um in the last uh uh let's say slightly above 3 years we've collected a total of 19 million liters of pete waste that's what have passed through our uh transfer stations so that alone speaks to how much volume would have gone to the streams and connects to Nairobi river which uh collects all this from the regions when we work in and into uh other freshwater bodies. Uh dialing back now currently we receive 4 million liters in a year. Still quite a huge number. Uh we are yet to net in all these volumes and uh part of what we are doing through just engaging the community uh to make sure that we get all these volumes to us through uh one behavior change and also just bring bridging the gap between the illegal way of eating the pits and the formal way of bringing the waste to us. >> Thank you. Thank you so much Francis. Unfortunately, that's uh all the time we have today. I want to thank Iowa for hosting and making this conversation possible. Uh because platforms like these are exactly what the sector needs more of so that we can have these conversations. So if you're a funer, a utility, a city or a county government who joined this webinar and you're wondering how we could or you could actually um implement the same or support to formalize this se sector feel free to reach out to fresh life operas and we are happy to share our examples or even progress this discussion further. Um there are quite a number of webinars that we before we close would like to quickly highlight uh that Iowa will be hosting in the next few weeks and few months and therefore we do request that you sign up uh or register for them. These ones include what you're seeing on the screen uh in front of you. There's one on shaping the future of water management through digital transformation and AI. This is happening on 7th September this week. Engineering design and operational challenges. The Panama Panama Canal Locks and Owasha Reservoir. That's on 10th September. Uh we have one on capacity development series. Uh this one will be happening on 18th September. Uh and then we have World Water Congress and Exhibition. Uh an event you need to definitely go to or register for if you haven't. It's happening at Glasgow in the UK. It will be on the 4th to 8th of October 2026. Uh and it will also then be followed by the digital water summit which is happening in Turkey, Istanbul from 24th to 26th November 2026. So please do mark your calendars, look out for this information or scan the QR code that you can see on the screen so that then you're able to either become a member of Iowa, get access to a lot of these materials that we are discussing today amongst many others as well as register for any upcoming events or webinars. And so as we end, I want to give a special thanks to our speakers Wally and Nicola as well as our panelists Francis Kura, Joel Obunga and Joseph Muuri for talking or sharing their experiences. And most importantly, thank you to all of you our audience for joining us. If you have more questions, comments, please feel free to reach out to Fresh Life or Kiwiasco or Opero and we will be happy to to support you uh or or even uh talk to you further. So, thank you aseni and have a great rest of the day. Bye, guys.