Clean Water & Sanitation for Kenyan Primary School

Ritaya is a public primary school with a high population of 917 pupils, which is attributed to its cross vicinity to Mairo-inya trading centre inNyandaruaCounty, Nyandarua NorthSub-County.The school infrastructure consists of mainly semi-permanent classroom blocks and a few permanent classroom blocks squeezed in a 2-acre plot.

In my last update, I had reported that Ritaya Primary school was our next beneficiary and today am happy to report that with your contributions and well wishes we have been able to start the construction of a masonry tank that will see the end of pupils bringing water to school using Jeri cans.

Project Management

 A project management committee (PMC) comprising of representatives of the school Board (PTA), the headmaster and KRA technical team was formed to undertake the following roles during the project implementation:

• Co-ordinate the daily running of the project activities which included procurement of construction material and supervision of skilled and unskilled labour;
• Community mobilization and sensitization on the project activities;
•  Security and storage of construction materials; and
• Participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E).

Project Implementation Status

The construction of the 75m³ masonry rainwater storage is ongoing and following is an outline of the tank construction process (steps and activities) in a chronological order:

1)          Site clearance and foundation layout;

2)          Excavation of the foundation;

3)          Laying and blinding of hardcore;

4)          Construction of the concrete slab reinforced with heavy gauge weld mesh and Y8 bars;

5)          Construction of tank wall, using single masonry layer reinforced with barbed wire placed after every 2 layers;

6)          Internal plastering of wall and floor. Chicken wire was used to reinforce the internal wall;

7)          Construction of the dome-shape ferrocement roof cover, which start with setting up the timber formwork, followed by laying of the reinforcement (using heavy gauge weld mesh, Y8 bars and chicken wire) and central pillar to hold the roof;

8)          External plastering and/or keying the masonry joints;

9)          Construction of water draw off points cum hand washing facility, including drain-off outlets;

10)     Installation of guttering system – including simple foul-flash device; and

11)     Signage for visibility which include acknowledgement of project implementer (KRA) and development partner (CMAD in this case).

 So far, activities 1-7 have been accomplished and 8 &9 are on-going. The tank construction process will be completed in a month’s time.

I look forward to your continued support and collaboration as we continue to create a conducive environment for our pupils to learn and excel in their academics.

THANK YOU