Published on 02.07.2022 at 1:25 p.m. by AFP
Côte d’Ivoire is currently experiencing floods, prompting many citizens to question the responsibilities related to sanitation issues. The heavy rains recorded in recent days in the country have caused significant material and even human damage. Every year, unfortunately, rainwater creates floods, especially in Abidjan, the economic capital, due to the lack of drainage channels.
However, who is responsible for the treatment of waste water, the evacuation of rainwater, the maintenance of septic tanks or city gutters? And who are the actors and what responsibilities should they assume?
Sanitation is a purification process integrating the collection of wastewater, its treatment and its discharge into the natural environment. The management of collective sanitation is a responsibility of the State, operated via the National Office for Sanitation and Drainage (Onad) which is delegated to the Water Distribution Company of Côte d’Ivoire (Sodeci) .
The open gutters, whose vocation is to collect rainwater, depend on the town halls. As a result, it is not up to Sodeci to clean the gutters, and as for the septic tanks, their maintenance is obviously the responsibility of each user.
Field of intervention of Sodeci
Sodeci is involved in particular in the collection, transport, treatment of waste water as well as the evacuation of rainwater via underground networks, according to a leasing contract entrusted to it by the State of Côte d’Ivoire.
This agreement confers exclusively on Sodeci the tasks of maintenance and operation of the sewerage and drainage networks of the city of Abidjan, the management of subscribers, in particular the invoicing and collection of the sewerage fee from users.
In addition, the agreement includes the execution of work entrusted by the State, namely the cleaning of underpasses, requests for connection, the cleaning of gutters of national interest, connections and works for collective use.
Rainy season management
Sodeci, according to the memorandum of understanding, stands alongside the State of Côte d’Ivoire to manage the rainy season. To do this, maintenance work on the underground rainwater networks is undertaken before the season, under the supervision of ONAD, according to a schedule. This work concerns the cleaning of the buried collectors and the existing gully manholes on the latter.
During the rainy season, monitoring of all the networks is carried out with a team dedicated to this task, criss-crossing the neighborhoods on motorbikes. These rounds also allow the intervention teams to deal with the malfunctions noted during the rains.
The objective of the innovation put into service by Sodeci is to ensure a better quality of service in terms of sanitation. A remote monitoring system that records the on/off states of electromechanical equipment and detects faults or malfunctions on the network. Once identified, these malfunctions are remedied without delay by Sodeci’s maintenance teams. It should be noted that the service restoration time is getting shorter from year to year.