India: BORDA introduces Health Impact Assessment and -Monitoring for all Community Based Sanitation Projects

BORDA and its 16 network partners in India are implementing sanitation projects including the construction of DEWATS [Decentralized Waste Water Treatment] in slums and poor peri-urban settlements for the last 8 years. Due to time and resources constraints, a systematic evaluation of the achieved impacts on the health and hygiene condition of the direct beneficiaries/users could not be done until this year.

In spring 2008, BORDA together with 5 partner organizations developed a tool allowing the evaluation of already realized impacts and an on-going health and hygiene impact monitoring.

Read more: Meike Zinn-Meinken, BORDA, 01 July 2008

Bangladesh: $165.7m WB project to improve city water, sanitation services

The World Bank (WB) funds a new project to improve water and sanitation services by Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority (Dwasa), says a press release. To improve sustainable delivery of stormwater drainage, wastewater and water services by the Dwasa, the government has initiated the ‘Dhaka Water Supply and Sanitation Project’ with funding from the WB. (…)

Secondly, it will carry out rehabilitation, repair and expansion of priority investments in city’s sewerage network and treatment plant to improve the urban environment. (…)

The WB also intends to support Chittagong’s water, sewerage and stormwater drainage system in conjunction with the development partners in the port city under a separate upcoming project.

Read all The Daily Star

India - Water Advocates Speak Out for Improved Sanitation

The Ganges is proof that even the holiest of nature’s creations can fall victim to the destructive powers of pollution.

Thousands of Hindu followers have their bodies committed to the Ganges each year in belief that the river’s waters will carry their souls to eternal salvation. With nearly 89 million liters of raw sewage flowing into the Ganges each day, the health of the waterway is now worse than ever before. Existing facilities can often treat only 13 percent of this pollution. Those who drink from the river risk contracting waterborne diseases such as typhoid, polio, and jaundice.

More - ENN

India: Toilet seats: BMC eats its own words

MUMBAI: When American talk show host Jay Leno quipped that Indians can send a rocket into space but cannot build a decent toilet, he probably had the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in mind.

The BMC’s tall claims of constructing 20,000 toilet seats in one year stands exposed after it was revealed that it managed only 120 new seats in the past 24 months. More shocking was the fact that these toilets were all constructed in just one area-Bhandup. Sources said it was not due to lack of funds, but political interference that was responsible for this state of affairs. This year, the BMC budgeted Rs 38 crore for construction of new toilets and Rs 20 crore for retrofitting existing toilets. The project is being taken up under the Slum Sanitation Programme (SSP). (…)

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India: Day-ling seminar on sustaining sanitation solutions

BANGALORE: With rapid urbanization, sanitation in the state is a major cause for concern. According to a human development report, nearly two-thirds of Indians have no access to sanitation and out of 1.8 million diarrhoea deaths in the world per year, 45,000 are in our country. Many NGOs say although several projects are being taken up the government, implementation and execution is not up to the mark. The missing element seems to be direct participation of the citizen in planning and execution. (…)

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Bangladesh - Hygiene promoters teach safe sanitation practices

HATITILA, Bangladesh, 31 July 2008 – At the community development centre in Hatitila, a remote village in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, Athoi Marma, 19, teaches songs about safe hygiene practices to 20 pre-school children. The songs are in Marma, an indigenous language spoken by only around 150,000 people in Bangladesh.

Athoi is one of 25 women from this hard-to-reach region who have received training from UNICEF to work as community hygiene promoters. The 15-day training seminar equipped her with tips on how to work with the community to promote safer hygiene practices.

More - UNICEF

India - Garbage Politics Spreads Stench

For a city that boasts of IT hegemony in the country, Bangalore has a dismal record of garbage management. The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP), whose obligatory function is to collect, transport and dispose of the municipal solid waste (MSW), is apparently caught up in the politics of one-upmanship.

On the garbage management, Rs 90 crore is spent annually. Recently, the chief minister B S Yeddyurappa commented that garbage contractors were a mafia. The contractors say they are being harassed by the officials without giving them adequate facility to dispose off the garbage. Here is an attempt to understand the riddle.

The MSW Story
The city generates about 3500 metric tonnes per day (MTD) or about 700 truck loads of MSW from house holds, markets, hotels and other commercial establishments. Before Greater Bangalore was formed, the Palike had floated tenders for collection and disposal of garbage in the 100 wards by constituting 30 packages of contracts. The annual cost of the services was estimated to be Rs 90 crore.

More - Deccan Herald

South Asia not on track to meet MDG sanitation goals: UNICEF- WHO report

South Asia has the highest rate of open defecation in the world at 48 percent, and is closely followed by sub-Saharan Africa (28 percent), says a  report issued today by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Drinking-water Supply and Sanitation (JMP).

According to the report,  63 percent (750 million people) of all open defecation takes place in South Asia. It also has the lowest rural coverage in the world at 23 percent, and the largest urban-rural disparity in the world (57 percent to 23 percent). (…)

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Bangladesh - Rundown public toilets

Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) has set up only 69 public toilets for more than One crore people of the city but about half of the toilets are either closed or unusable at present, resulting in immense sufferings of the city dwellers when outside home.

In recent years, DCC set up 38 public toilets, mostly at parks and inter-district bus and launch terminals. While selecting the places the authorities overlooked some of the busiest points where people have to wait for a long time.

DCC has not set up any public toilets at Farmgate crossing, one of the busiest places of the city. One public toilet is located at the west corner of Shaheed Anwara Park, about half a kilometer from the Farmgate intersection.

There was another public toilet on the road island in front of Ananda Cinema but DCC recently demolished it for beautification of the road.

Expressing frustration, a traffic sergeant on duty at Farmgate said due to absence of public toilet all the traffic sergeants and constables deployed there have to suffer immensely. “There is no way when a call of nature comes,” he said.

More - Daily Star

India - Wrong priorities?

In our quest to become an economic and nuclear power, are we losing track of the basic needs of ordinary people?

One out of every two persons in the world compelled to defecate in the open is an Indian. This is one of several unsavoury facts brought out in a recent report by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. According to the report, out of the 1.2 billi on people who defecate in the open worldwide because they have no access to toilets, more than half are Indian. An astounding 667 million people in this country have no option but to defecate in the open, a country that would like people to believe that it is on the cusp of becoming a global economic giant.

Why then does sanitation remain a subject that is accorded a relatively low priority compared to many other needs, including water and energy? Could it be because for the middle classes, policy makers, those who live in permanent housing with built-in toilets, sanitation is not an issue? But the lack of water and electricity is? Could it be because the problem is essentially that of the poor and the homeless? Could it also be because the worst affected are poor women?

More - The Hindu