Pivot recently launched a new division of the business,
Pit Vidura, which offers a safe and hygienic pit
latrine emptying service in low-income and informal
settlements in Kigali. Prior to Pit Vidura, the only
option for emptying a full pit latrine was to do so
manually – a procedure that involved a person getting
inside the pit and shoveling it out and then dumping
the waste in the immediate vicinity.
Pit Vidura is currently the only pit exhausting service
that is safe, reliable, and affordable to residents in
dense settlements in Kigali. Pit Vidura’s potential
market includes urban households with full pit
latrines that need a safe and affordable pit emptying
service. In Kigali, an estimated 103,000 households
use pit latrines across the city. Many of these latrines
are in dense settlements, inaccessible to traditional
exhauster trucks. Even if these pit latrines are
accessible, the exhauster trucks refuse to service
them due to the added complications of the weak
structural integrity of the pits (unable to cope with
strong vacuum) and high volumes of solid waste.
Between the beginning of May and the end of
October 2016, 152 pits were emptied by Pit Vidura
using an eVac pump. The eVac was used to excavate
sludge from household pit latrines, and a truck
was hired to transport sludge, contained in barrels,
from households to the Pivot Works fuel factory.
A group of six pit latrine emptiers were trained to do
the work safely and equipped with the appropriate
personal protective equipment (PPE). An in-depth
cost analysis was carried out for this period. Among
the findings are that customer prices are set too
low because household revenues are insufficient to
cover the operational costs of the service. A better
understanding of the target market’s willingness to pay
is needed to determine a price point that achieves cost
recovery while continuing to serve our target market.
To lower the cost of service delivery, Pit Vidura will
focus on developing a pit-to-road pump technology
to enhance the efficiency of the emptying process.