Annual report of the Public Health Department / Zanzibar Protectorate.

  • Zanzibar. Public Health Department.
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Public Health Department / Zanzibar Protectorate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/50 (page 7)
    Town Refuse. Collection and Disposal.—There are many and great difficulties in the way of maintaining the town lanes in a clean and sanitary condition. The chief difficulty is due to the dirty habits of the people who invariably deposit their refuse anywhere but in the place designed to receive it. The narrow lanes with their many turns and the usually bad and irregular surface, bounded by Indian shops on each side, will defy the best endeavours of the sanitarian who is still further hampered by the practice of dumping builders material, etc., by the side of the lane in which building operations are in progress. It is not possible to stop this practice entirely as there is nowhere else to dump these materials, at any rate tempor¬ arily, but unless a very close watch is kept the heap, if valueless, is not removed on the completion of the work and rapidly becomes a nuisance being an attractive place on which to deposit all sorts of filth. At convenient places iron dust bins are provided. The type of bin in use consists of an iron cylinder 22 in diameter and 30 in height with a hinged lid with a flange round which is so made that it cannot be opened quite back unless, as frequently happens, suffi¬ cient force is used to bend the specially strengthened lid. These bins have been found to work more satisfactorily and to stand the wear and tear of use better than the old type of bin in which a spring was used to shut the lid. The bin stands on a concrete base which can be swept clean after the removal of the bin and its contents. Wooden boxes are provided for the use of individual house¬ holders living at a distance from the nearest bin. These are not satisfactory but a sufficiency of iron receptacles is not available. These boxes are collected by the sweepers and emptied into the nearest bin together with the road sweepings, the bins being emptied into the cart which follows up on the sweepers. During the year 43,933 hand cart loads of refuse were removed from the town—an average of 120 per day. There are three collect¬ ions daily but even this is insufficient to prevent complaints wffiich are usually due to putrid fish, etc., being deposited in the bin between the collections. The greater portion of the town refuse is disposed of in the Des¬ tructor but owing to the absence of roads it is not possible so to deal with the greater part of the ’Ngambo refuse which has to be dumped in the most suitable places available. Small incinerators throughout this district would be an improvement and it is hoped that in the coming year it will be possible to get some erected. What is really urgently required in the ’Ngambo district are roads. The destructor works fairly satisfactorily on the wffiole in the dry season but its position is singularly unfortunate. Under the most favourable conditions some nuisance is inevitable around a destructor and in the wet season when the destructor is unable to