World's longest toilet queues marked in Kenya

Dzifa Azumah, GNA Special Correspondence, Nairobi, Kenya, courtesy UNDP

Nairobi (Kenya), March 22, GNA - The people of Kibera, the world's second largest slum, within the Nairobi City in Kenya, on Sunday joined other people around the world to form the world's longest toilet queues, to change records of the Guinness Book of Records.

The simultaneous queues were expected to be formed in all towns, villages and cities around the world, as part of activities marking 2010 World Water Day celebrations.

It was to send signals to world leaders about the lack of sanitation facilities around the world, as water resources are being polluted with faecal matters.

In the Ghana, the event was marked at Ashiaman, a slum area within Accra, the capital city.

Dr. Daniel Adom, an official of the UN-Habitat, Nairobi Kenya, during a visit to the Kibera area, said the prevailing conditions in Kibera could be equated to that which prevails in Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra, except that the slum of Sodom and Gomorrah was far smaller in size.

"There are a lot of similarities including the high population density, high unemployment levels and illiteracy level frequent fire outbreak and other features associated with slum areas".

Dr. Adom, a former head of the Ghana Water Resources Commission, said the Kibera area has been a settlement area since 1912, unlike Sodom and Gomorrah, which become a recent settlement in Accra. He said that the UN-Habitat was supporting the Kenyan Government to implement the Kibera Integrated Water, Sanitation and Waste Management Project.

The Project aims at contributing towards improving the livelihoods of the urban poor in the Soweto east village of Kibera slums. Dr. Adom said "The whole area is being developed in stages to give the people a new way of life including better housing, better sanitation and toilet facilities, and also to curb the issue of flying toilets and the pollution of the Nairobi and Ngong Rivers".

He called on the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to give way to government to continue with the Odor Ecological Restoration project, since it had great benefit for the entire residents of Accra and indeed the entire residents of Ghana.