Abstract:

Background: Ongoing Primary and Secondary Education Development Program (PEDP & SEDP) has led to increase in enrollment of children in schools. This created a high demand for facilities such as classroom, chairs, laboratories, latrines and water supply. Water and latrines did not receive equal attention like others. National strategic plan for school Water Sanitation and Hygiene (SWASH) 2012-2017 was to address such challenges with objectives to improve SWASH by 2017. Hence this study aimed to evaluate the implementation of SWASH program in Ukerewe.

Methodology: A cross sectional survey was done among 42 schools in the district with 40 schools being government owned. Systematic random sampling was used and were collected using structured interview which was pre-tested and amended prior conducting fieldwork. UNICEF, WASH in Schools Monitoring Package observational check-list was used to assess sanitation facilities.

Results: Findings from this study showed that none of the schools had SWASH committees, the latrine-hole to students ratio was 1.71 with only 31.3% of the latrines being in good clean condition and about half (59.5%) of the schools had no facilities for washing hands. For the schools with hand washing facilities only 21.4% had an effective hand washing practice (presence of soap and water).

Conclusion: The most common source of water used was lake water (35.7%) with (42.9%) having water storage facilities. The study shows that most of the objectives of national strategic plan are yet to be implemented at Ukerewe. There is a need minor repair to complete new construction of SWASH facilities in Ukerewe.