Collection and transport of fecal sludge (Burkina Faso)

The population is obliged to resort to autonomous sanitation structures and when these structures are full, they call upon the services of mechanical and manual emptying machines. Manual emptying workers are essential and work in rudimentary conditions. They are marginalized by society and exposed to many dangers, in deplorable sanitary conditions: lack of protective equipment, lack of transport equipment, lack of access to dumping sites. With the overall objective of improving the management of manually emptied sludge and the transport link in particular, the experimental approach consisted of drawing up an inventory of manual emptying, identifying the various stakeholders involved, and collecting the difficulties encountered with a view to proposing solutions for improvement. The bitter conclusion is that only 20% of the sludge emptied by manual emptiers is evacuated from households. In such a context, a sludge transport equipment is necessary. A prototype that reduces the number of round trips by at least half, and thus the fuel consumption, but also allows the sludge to be transported in a hygienic way while protecting the environment. We propose a cylindrical tank for sludge with a capacity of 2m3 equipped with a grid of 1.8 m2 to allow separation of sludge from large objects, closing doors to avoid inconvenience during transport and finally a valve to facilitate the evacuation of the sludge for unloading. This prototype, estimated at one million nine hundred and sixty-seven thousand eight hundred CFA francs (1.967.800 F CFA) for the ferrous type and two million one hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred CFA francs (2.117.800 F CFA) for the polyethylene type.