Sanitation Updates

The Coalition for National Unity and Rural Advancement Government would like as many villages as possible in Solomon Islands to have access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation during its term.

Prime Minister, Dr. Derek Sikua, made the statement while addressing villages he visited on North-East Guadalcanal during his current seven-day constituency tour.

Read More - Solomon Times Online

Jalilpur (Chandauli), May 12. In the era of gram pradhans owning palatial houses and zipping in snazzy MUVs, the head of this village lives in a rented house. And despite international renown, he has not even a cycle of his own.

Sri Prakash Singh (51) is a clutter-buster. Not just of this village 15 kms from Varanasi, but also for experts in at least 20 countries. And he is responsible for ushering in a revolution of total cleanliness and sanitation.

A science graduate, he has made Jalilpur of Chandauli globally famous by ensuring that every village in the house has a toilet.

Read More - expressindia

The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has invited public comment on the Strategic Framework on Water for Sustainable Development: Discussion document. The deadline for written comments is 30 May 2008.

Source: Participation Junction

The discussion document is quite frank about current failures/shortcomings in water and sanitation service delivery. Some quotes:

“When 77 WSA managers surveyed for the 2007 Masibambane II evaluation were asked whether those who were served would in future be rejoining the backlog queue as a result of defective infrastructure in recently completed projects, 51% said this was happening already. 16% of beneficiaries in settlements with recent water projects said they now had to walk more than 200 meters to fetch water”. [chap. 3.2.2, p. 17]

“A growing number of new flush toilets malfunction, particularly those built swiftly to meet bucket eradication targets. The number of sewage spills from overloaded systems is rising steadily. Some houses have two new VIP toilets, built by parallel programmes. Many VIPs are built badly, some are not being used at all, and unusable full pits means people are reverting to unimproved toilets or open defecation, with little net gain in health or hygiene behaviour”. [chap. 6.3.5, p. 41].

Total sanitation in action:

(…)

How did you provide sanitation coverage for all the 12 villages under your Chakchaka GP? 

It was not easy at all. We made it mandatory for all residents of this GP to ensure that there were sanitary toilets in their dwellings and they use only those. To get any certificate or facilities from the panchayat office they must satisfy us first. We are still following this procedure. We did graffiti on walls and intensive campaigning on sanitation. Sanitary toilet facilities were extended to 17 primary schools, two high schools and 27 Anganwadi centres. We also provide disinfectants to schools. To make the environment clean in Chakchaka Industrial Growth Centre complex we took up a social forestry scheme and planted more than 25,000 trees at Chapaguri. We did all these with our own funds.   (…)

Read all thestatesman.net

Nigeria requires more than 120 million dollars (about N14 billion) to provide 62 million citizens access to basics anitation and hygiene by 2015.

The statistics were provided by the UNICEF”D” Field Office in Bauchi in response to anational survey on sanitation and hygieneundertaken by the News Agency of Nigeria(NAN). The target is in line with the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on sanitation.

According to the UN agency, the country alsoneeds to build more than eight million toiletsbefore 2015 to achieve sustainable sanitation and hygiene.

Read More - This Day

GOVERNMENT has signed an agreement with three organisations to mobilise financial resources to improve sanitation in Zimbabwe to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goals Sanitation targets.

Permanent Secretaries of the Ministries of Health and Child Welfare, Water Resources and Infrastructure Development, Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, Finance, Economic Development and representatives of Unicef, Worldwide Fund for Nature and the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development signed the agreement in Harare on Wednesday.

Read More - The Herald

HEALTH and Environment Minister Rudyard Spencer yesterday announced Government’s intention to create a master plan for sewerage as part of efforts to improve Jamaica’s sanitation.

The plan, the minister said, will include the institutional arrangements for the provision of sewerage services in Jamaica.

Read More - Jamaica Observer

Although Namibia is ahead in meeting its Millennium Development Goal on access to clean water, it is lagging far behind in providing adequate sanitation to its people.

This was said by EU Ambassador Elisabeth Pape at the official opening of the Luederitz sewage treatment facility on Friday.

Pape said Namibia was too slow in improving sanitation in rural and urban areas alike.

Read More - allAfrica

LONDON, April 14

A British-based charity is calling on the Group of Eight summit in Japan later this year to agree to take a global action plan meant to improve water supply and sanitation. WaterAid believes the G-8 summit in Hokkaido in July is the ”last best shot” for raising the issue — which is often overlooked by the aid community, activists say.

The charity wants the G-8 major powers to include the plan in a joint declaration by their leaders, which would see a global taskforce set up to examine progress on sanitation and look at ways of overcoming regional failures.  

(…)     One tactic the group is using is to show how dramatic increases in the standards of public health across East Asia resulted from improved sanitation. On the action plan, Northover said he preferred countries to come up with plans outlining what they need to improve sanitation rather than having specific funding targets and just pumping money into nations from the center. According to the charity, it would cost an extra $10 billion each year until 2015 to reach the Millennium Development Goal. WaterAid is keen to see an increase in budgets to address this problem but the funding needs to be properly targeted.

Kyodo News, Japan

In a commentary published in Nature on 20 March 2008, Jamie Bartram (WHO) calls for a smarter system of indicators to monitor progress in achieving the MDG goals for safe water and sanitation. The current way of measuring progress shares “a basic weakness in regarding every human as either ‘having’ or ‘not having’ these key amenities [safe water and basic sanitation] ; a formula well past its sell-by date”, Bartram argues.

“Counting haves and have-nots has the advantages of simplicity and equity” [...] but it does not encourage “progressive improvements”.

“The benchmark for sanitation is use at home, whereas for water it is an improved communal source - a protected well or spring, for example. Applying benchmarks that require both drinking-water and sanitation at home would better represent what is needed to protect health and secure social benefits. Sadly, raising the water benchmark to a household level alongside the sanitation benchmark would mean missing both targets”.

For Bartram elements of a smarter system include:

• recognising not only household latrines but also successful shared or public toilets
• including health, well-being and livelihoods in indicators
• using “overlays” incorporating greater detail in indicators, e.g. ‘marking down’ flush toilets “if they discharge untreated wastewater into a nearby river rather than to a treatment facility”.
• recognising “that safe water and sanitation in schools, workplaces, hospitals, markets and other public places are also important”
• recognising “that sanitation protects health best when practised by all”.