Characteristics of housing units
Daily water distribution hits 87.1% of the Central West after water crisis
May 22, 2019 10h00 AM | Last Updated: May 23, 2019 12h39 PM
In 2018, 87.1% of the housing units in the Central West had daily water supply, differently from the level reached in 2017, when only 69% of the housing units had access to that type of service. The increase, however, was not big enough to reach levels recorded in 2016, when the proportion of housing units that received water from the public system in the Central West every day was 94.7%.
The reduction of supply in the Central West resulted from the water rationing carried out in the Federal District between January 2017 and June 2018. The federal capital also recovered in 2018, with 64.6% of the housing units having daily access to water, but still far from the 99.7% of 2016, prior to the water crisis.
That is presented in the Continuous National Household Sample Survey: characteristics of the housing units and residents, released today by the IBGE. “With the end of the rationing in 2018, the coverage of access in the Federal District increased, and pushed upwards the figures of that Major Region. The situation is better than in 2017, but still far behind the figure of 2016”, says Adriana Beringuy, IBGE technician.
Between 2017 and 2018, the access to the public sewer system also increased in the Central West Region, having changed from 52.5% to 55.6%. The states with improvement of that form of access were Mato Grosso (from 29.8% to 34.9%) and Mato Grosso do Sul (from 41.4% to 48.2%).
More than half of the persons without access to garbage collection is in the Northeast
The survey also shows that, in 2018, 20.1 million persons all over the country burned garbage in the property or did something else to it, for example, dumping the garbage in ditches. More than half of that population,10.5 million, was concentrated in the Northeast.
In Maranhão, where 31.5% of the housing units shared those conditions, there were a total 2.3 million persons. In Bahia, a total 15.5% of the housing units had no access to collection in the housing units, that is, 2.4 million residents.
“Burning garbage in the property and making use of ditches and other destinations for garbage are activities which make the population vulnerable to diseases, beside leading to soil contamination”, highlights the IBGE technician.
The Northeast also had the smallest percentage of housing units with daily availability of water in 2018 (69.1%). A total 14.7% had water between one and three times per week and 14.4%, from 4 to 6 times, reaching a total 12 million residents.
In the country, 72.4 million persons lived in housing units without access to the public sewer system
In 2018, 66.3% of the housing units in the country had access to the general system or to a cesspit connected to that system for sewage disposal, with major significant differences between the Major Regions, with a change from 88.6% of the housing units in the Southeast, 21.8% in the North and 44.6% in the Northeast.
A total 72.4 million persons in the country lived in housing units without access to sewer systems, being 31 million in the Northeast and 13.9 million in the North. "It is worth mentioning that does not necessarily mean those persons live in precarious housing units. In these two regions, for example, there are big areas of land where cesspits not connected to the general system are still prevalent.
