A sewerage system at Kigali university teaching hospital. Some institutions have constructed a sewerage system already but a general discharge is required
Kigali residents will soon start paying for their liquid waste as part of the implementation of the new sewerage project due for construction soon.
Residents living along the mapped areas connected on the 86 kilometers sewer network will be obliged to pay for the household sewer collected and drained from their homes.
Marie Josée Nyiraburanga, sanitation project implementation officer at Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC) told KT Press that payment will be made and added to the existing water bill at the end of every month.
“The rates of the waste bills have not yet been decided but they will depend on the amount of water used by each client, since 80 percent of the water ends up as waste,” Nyiraburanga said.
So far three partners including – Government of Rwanda and two international lending institutions-European Investment Bank and African Development Bank have already committed their stake to financing construction of Kigali Central sewerage system project which is estimated to cost €95.8 million.
This will be the first-ever central sewerage system for Kigali, to be completed in next three years.
The first phase will be the construction of a central sewerage system that will collect waste from the Central Business District (CBD), Nyarugenge sector and Muhima sector.
Most of the houses in Kigali rely on medium septic tanks for liquid waste draining which means that not only domestic wastewater but also rainwater is buried in the ground, which breaks the water cycle.
The City of Kigali (CoK) says that this project will be very crucial in address long-standing concerns of community hygiene but the prices should be fixed to suit citizen affordability.
According to Bruno Rangira, the CoK spokesperson the prices will be handled with stakeholders like Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) in the same way it is being done with garbage collection.
“We will follow this up so that the prices are affordable to citizens but also helpful in the maintenance and investment made,” Rangira said.
With about 1.5 million dwellers and increasing households in Kigali city, the move is expected to address the long standing water waste problems in the city that is considered to be one of the cleanest globally.
