Effective and resilient sanitation systems need a vibrant sanitation workforce. Annet Kagene, Ronnie Nyanzi, Julian Musiime and Andrés Hueso González explain how the Kampala Capital City Authority achieved just that.
Sanitation workers – those emptying septic tanks and pits, maintaining sewers or dealing with faecal waste anywhere along the sanitation chain – often face terrible working conditions. In many contexts, they operate with limited equipment and training and suffer all-too-frequent accidents, or even death, while low pay and social stigma compound the situation. This particularly affects manual pit emptiers operating informally.
Creating a sustainable and supported workforce
Sanitation workers’ rights have historically been neglected by utilities, regulators, governments and development partners. Emerging global and national efforts to reverse this are often perceived as ‘nice-to-haves’ – optional add-ons to sanitation programmes that are promoted by ‘campaigners’. It is, no doubt, an urgent matter of social justice, especially when you listen to their stories.
The business case, however, is equally strong. The globally agreed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.2 ambition to ensure safely managed sanitation services for all cannot be achieved without a regulated and vibrant workforce. SDG 6.2 requires strong systems to expand sanitation services for all in a safe, sustainable, inclusive and climate-resilient way.
Strengthening sanitation systems must, therefore, include ensuring sanitation workers’ rights are protected and their role institutionalised. This is critical to ensure there is a healthy workforce, delivering good-quality services without risking their integrity, with the profession respected and lucrative enough to attract more people to join.
Supporting sanitation workers makes business sense –and not just the rights of formal workers, but also of those providing services informally. These informal sanitation service providers are predominantly manual emptiers, who use rudimentary tools or pumps to empty pits and tanks. Often, they are the only service providers capable of serving crowded low-income settlements that trucks cannot reach.
It is essential that sanitation programmes adopt a balanced approach, considering not only service improvements and costs but also the role of existing service providers and the rights of workers. Without this holistic perspective, service improvement initiatives may not only result in the loss of employment for manual emptiers, but also hinder progress towards achieving universal sanitation services. Research shows that even formalisation efforts can have negative, unintended consequences for workers if they are not properly supported.
How to get it right
The good news is that we know how to do it well. Kampala, Uganda, offers valuable lessons on how to engage with sanitation workers and informal service providers.
Kampala Capital City Authority’s (KCCA) longstanding efforts to improve sanitation services in the city have been inclusive of manual pit emptiers. With its sewer network covering less than 10%, a vast majority of the 1.9 million city population rely on on-site sanitation, requiring pit emptying services. And much of the population live in informal settlements that cannot be accessed by vacuum trucks.
KCCA has the mandate – the 2010 KCCA Act – to ensure on-site sanitation service delivery in the city. Considering the city’s context and the vision of political leaders, KCCA understood that it had to work with the regulated private sector. That meant engaging with existing formal and informal emptiers.
United action
Initially, most emptiers were unregulated and operating informally. Some were using vacuum trucks, others were using adapted shovels and buckets, while others had started using the Gulper – a sludge hand pump. With support from development partners, NGOs and civil society, KCCA held consultations with all of the emptiers in order to build trust, clarify expectations and share KCCA’s vision on the roles of private operators and local authorities.
The leaders of these operators varied considerably, from skilled entrepreneurs to people with low literacy levels. KCCA invested in developing capacity early on, an effort that has continued ever since, including providing business development clinics to help inform investment decisions, financial discipline and digital literacy, and support in regards to emptying equipment, marketing, bookkeeping, registration, and occupational health and safety (OHS). KCCA also started supporting those using shovels and buckets to move to using Gulpers.
In 2017, an inventory of private emptiers was compiled. KCCA encouraged and incentivised emptiers to register and form associations, which led to vacuum truck operators forming The Association of Uganda Emptiers Limited (TAOUEL) and emptiers with Gulpers forming the Gulpers Association of Uganda (GUA) in 2017.
Two years later, the two associations and KCCA signed a Memorandum of Understanding to streamline roles and responsibilities and implement a more organised and systematic provision of faecal sludge collection, transport and disposal services.
Subsequently, KCCA strived to improve the regulatory environment for sanitation service provision. The Kampala Sewerage and Faecal Sludge Management Ordinance (2019) strengthened the regulatory frameworks and was followed by efforts to license private operators – with less stringent environmental service permits for Gulper operators – and the development of standard operating procedures and the ongoing establishment of service level agreements. All of these efforts were planned in a participatory way, with constant and productive exchange between KCCA, the two national associations and other stakeholders.
Emphasis on OHS was present throughout, featuring in all key policies and plans. There is a specific OHS policy guiding operators on how to minimise the risks involved in the emptying, transportation and disposal of faecal sludge. OHS was the subject of multiple training activities and a key element of the licensing process. The KCCA ordinance states that those handling faecal sludge must have proof of health and safety training, appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) – gloves, masks, boots, overalls and a helmet – safe sitting facilities in vehicles, and be vaccinated against tetanus and other infectious diseases.
As a result of KCCA’s efforts, the percentage of safely managed faecal sludge in the city has increased from 54% in 2015 to over 80% in 2024. TAOUEL now has 32 registered operators and 358 affiliate sanitation workers, using 169 vacuum trucks. GUA has 34 registered operators and 272 affiliate workers, with 36 pumps (mainly Gulpers). Nine companies in each association have obtained a licence or permit. Some, such as Brilliant Sanitation Uganda Limited, have not only seen exponential growth in their operations and income, but also hold decision-making roles in the Pan-African Association of Sanitation Actors (PASA), a continental network representing private operators.
An important enabling environment was created across multiple projects and development partners. In particular, the ongoing City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) programme, which started in 2019. The CWIS framework – focusing on city-wide reach and inclusion – has strengthened ambitions to reach the whole city, again giving prominence to the role of manual emptiers.
There is still a long way to go in Kampala, with challenges including: capacity development for new people joining the business; licensing delays; finding appropriate and affordable PPE and ensuring it is used; enforcing compliance and tackling unfair competition from unregistered providers; and a context of dwindling external support. Kampala does, however, offer valuable lessons for local authorities in other cities that want to improve sanitation services in an inclusive way.
It is worth noting that authorities may not always be aware of the important role of manual emptiers or be willing to engage with informal service providers. It is these workers and service providers that are best placed to communicate with the authorities about their role. But informal manual workers may need support to develop capacity, get organised, and engage with authorities.
When both factors converge – not-very-willing authorities and not-very-organised workers – civil society and development partners need to engage with the workers and support their empowerment. The Initiative for Sanitation Workers’ empowerment support fund, which has supported informal workers’ groups and grassroots activists across many countries, provides valuable lessons and success stories, from the creation of a national association of sewer cleaners in Pakistan to the recognition of the manual sanitation worker profession in Burkina Faso.
As the story from Kampala shows, engaging with informal service providers and protecting the rights of sanitation workers is the business-wise thing to do. If we are to accelerate progress towards safely managed sanitation for all, it needs to become an integral part of the sanitation systems strengthening agenda of local and national authorities, utilities, regulators and development partners.
The authors: Annet Kagene is private sector officer and Ronnie Nyanzi is finance specialist of the KCCA CWIS programme, Julian Musiime is a sanitation officer at the African Water and Sanitation Association (AfWASA), and Andrés Hueso González is sanitation senior policy analyst at WaterAid
