I tried to go back to Alex to speak to more people about the sanitation problems.Yesterday, I spoke to people in Sjwetla.Today I wanted to get another view from the people in Alex Eastbank(ie the RDP houses).The people living there seemed mostly satisfied with the sanitation system-they used mainly the flush type toilets.
I visited Joburg water ( the Zandfontein branch) that deals with the Alex sanitation mainly and interviewed the depot manager,Tshediso Motlatla,a civil engineer from Wits. I briefly asked him about the present sytem and the newer technologies in the pipeline.
I need to interview him on Monday again for more information as he needed to be at a meeting later that day.
Dr Daniel Irurah from Wits Architecture was quite pessimistic about the future of better sanitation in any informal settlement.He has done extensive research on the urbanisation of informal settlements in Nairobi,Kenya,with Prof Marie Huchzermeyer from the Wits Architecture department.
He had become a bit despondent from some of the projects that did not work in Kibera,Kenya.However, he said there were some fanatastic eco-friendly methods that people in informal settlements do not appreciate,beacuse they are faced with a choice of : Do we want better housing first or better toilets first? And usually the common response is better housing.
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