Around the world people use bank machines to access cash: but in the Kenyan capital’s crowded slums, people now use similar machines to access an even more basic requirement — clean water.<\/p>\n
In a bid to boost access to clean water, four water dispensing machines have been installed in Nairobi slums that operate like cash machines — with customers able to buy affordable water using smart cards.<\/p>\n
It has cut costs dramatically, and is helping improve health, residents say.<\/p>\n
“It’s pure and good for cooking, and above all it is affordable,” said Peter Ngui, who runs a small street restaurant.<\/p>\n
“I used to get water from far away, but this water system is closer to my place of work.”<\/p>\n
Previously people living in Nairobi’s cramped slums struggled to get clean water cheaply.<\/p>\n
Without water pipes or plumbing in the tin-hut districts, residents resorted to buying water from sellers who dragged handcarts loaded with jerry cans or oil drums into the narrow streets.<\/p>\n
That water was often dirty, sometimes taken illegally from broken pipes.<\/p>\n
But the new machines, installed by the government-run Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company (NWSC), allow people to purchase water directly — and far more cheaply — than before.<\/p>\n
Residents load money onto the water smart cards at a nearby kiosk or via payments sent on a mobile phone — a common system of payment in Kenya, which pioneered the sending of cash via phones — then tapping into the machine how many litres they want to buy.<\/p>\n
Kenya’s slums earned a grim reputation for “flying toilets” — when people defecate into plastic bags due to a lack of other facilities, which are then hurled somewhere else into the shanty town.<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Around the world people use bank machines to access cash: but in the Kenyan capital’s crowded slums, people now use similar machines to access an even more basic requirement — clean water. In a bid to boost access to clean water, four water dispensing machines have been installed in Nairobi slums that operate like cash … Continue reading “Kenya is banking on water”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":19627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[12041,12042,2242,1643,4837,455],"class_list":["post-19625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-atm-macines","tag-flying-toilets","tag-health","tag-kenya","tag-nairobi","tag-water"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/flyingtoilet.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19626,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19625\/revisions\/19626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}