��������

NAIROBI: Using a crutch to bear her weight, 85-year-old Molly Aluoch trudges from her mud-walled room on the outskirts of a sprawling Nairobi slum, shouldering a sack of used plastic to exchange for a shower or a safe toilet.
For the 31 years she has lived in Kibera, Kenya’s largest informal settlement, water and sanitation have remained scarce and costly — often controlled by cartels who charge residents prices beyond their means.
The Human Needs Project (HNP) seeks to mitigate that. Residents can trade discarded plastic for “green points,” or credits, they can redeem for services such as drinking water, toilets, showers, laundries and even meals.
“With my green points, I can now access a comfortable and clean toilet and bathroom any time of the day,” Aluoch said.
Before, she would spend 10 shillings (eight US cents) to use a toilet and another 10 for a bathroom, a significant chunk from the residents’ average daily income, 200 to 400 shillings, before food and housing costs.
“It meant that without money, I would not use a toilet,” she said.
Unable to use Kibera’s pit latrines owing to her frailty meant she would have to resort to “unhygienic means.”
Now, that money goes toward food for her three grandchildren.
Aluoch, a traditional birth attendant, is among some 100 women who collect plastics for green points, helping them access water, sanitation, and hygiene services.
She takes her plastic to a center 200 meters (yards) from her home, where one kilogramme of recyclable plastics earns 15 green points, equivalent to 15 shillings.
The project serves some 800 residents daily, allowing them access to modern bathrooms, clean water and menstrual hygiene facilities — services that are out of reach for many Kibera households.
Since 2015, the project has distributed more than 50 million liters (13 million gallons) of water and more than one million toilet and shower uses.
In 2024 alone, it distributed 11 million liters of water and enabled 124,000 bathroom and toilet uses.


With water a scarce commodity in Kibera, it is common for vendors to create artificial shortages to inflate prices, forcing residents to pay more than 10 times the normal price.
The city’s water service charges between $0.60 and $0.70 per cubic meter for connected households, but by comparison, Kibera residents have to stump up as much as $8 to $19 for the same amount.
“Getting water was hard. We could go several days without water,” said Magret John, 50, a mother of three.
Today, her reality is different.
“The water point is at my doorstep. The supply is steady and the water is clean. All I need is to collect plastics, get points, redeem and get water,” she said.
John, who has lived in Kibera for nine years, says the project has been a game changer, especially for women and girls.
“Access to proper sanitation services guarantees women and girls their dignity during menstruation.”
Now, with 10 water points spread across Kibera — pulled from a borehole with a daily capacity of half a million liters — NHP shields some residents from informal vendors’ exploitative pricing.
The project’s dual mission is to meet basic human needs while tackling Kibera’s mounting waste problem.
HNP’s director of strategic partnerships Peter Muthaura said it helps to improve health and the daily living conditions in Kibera.
“When people cannot access dignified toilets and bathrooms, the environment bears the impact,” he said.
It also fosters development, he said.
In the first quarter of 2025 alone, Kibera residents delivered two tons of recyclable plastic, with around 250 women directly engaged in daily collection and delivery.
For Aluoch, every sack of plastics and every green point earned goes beyond clean water and sanitation: it restores a sense of dignity.
“My prayer is that this project spreads to every corner of Kibera, and reaches thousands of women whose dignity has been robbed by a lack of sanitation services,” she said.

TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s poll ratings have rebounded a month after disastrous election results left his premiership hanging by a thread, a clutch of surveys showed Monday.
Ishiba took the helm of the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last year and has since lost his majority in both houses of parliament, most recently in upper chamber elections in July.
But the self-confessed defense policy “geek” and maker of model ships has defied calls to resign from within the party, which has governed Japan almost non-stop since the 1950s.
According to one poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun daily published Monday, the approval rating for Ishiba’s cabinet was 39 percent, a record 17 points higher than after the July 20 vote.
More respondents (50 percent) now think Ishiba should remain than resign (42 percent), the questionnaire showed, a reversal from July, when 54 percent said he should go and 35 percent stay.
Another poll conducted by Kyodo News put support at 35.4 percent, up 12.5 points from last month after the upper house election, while the disapproval rating stood at 49.8 percent.
A third survey by the Mainichi Shimbun put backing for the prime minister at 33 percent, a rise of four points, the first time it has been over 30 percent since February.
The Yomiuri put the recovery down to the recent trade deal with the United States and efforts by Ishiba’s government to curb the recent meteoric rise in rice prices.
US President Donald Trump announced a “massive” trade deal with Japan only two days after the upper house election, cutting threatened US tariffs to 15 percent from 25 percent, while lowering those on cars to the same level.
Voter backing of Ishiba’s handling of US trade negotiations rose to 42 percent from 29 percent in June.
An overwhelming 86 percent said they approved of the government’s decision to shift policy toward increasing rice production.
Rice prices have skyrocketed due to supply problems linked to a very hot summer in 2023 and panic-buying after a “megaquake” warning last year, among other factors.
Ishiba has appointed a new farm minister – the popular Shinjiro Koizumi, 44, a potential challenger – and his government has released emergency stocks in an effort to bring down prices.
According to media reports, the LDP plans to conduct a review of last month’s election, to be followed by a decision on whether to hold a party leadership election.
Ishiba, 68, said after a recent LDP plenary meeting, where some lawmakers reportedly urged him to step down, that he would “consider appropriately” the results of this investigation.
“I’d like to deepen my thinking as various things are going on simultaneously,” he said.
“Even within the LDP, passion for holding a party leadership election... has been diminishing,” said Mikitaka Masuyama, politics professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
“They may face criticism that instead of doing their jobs and addressing everyday life struggles like inflation, the LDP is holding a party leadership election,” Masuyama said.