Sanitation Updates

Pupils from a Belfast primary school have been taking part in an innovative project organised by the British Red Cross to mark World Water Day today.

Children from Strandtown Primary have been keeping water diaries detailing each time they have used or come across water during a typical day.

The pupils will compare their diaries with ones completed by schoolchildren in Cambodia where the British Red Cross supports water and sanitation work in schools.

Read More - Belfast Telegraph

Even now, during the dry season, water seems to penetrate all aspects of Cambodian culture. Thousands of Cambodians earn their living by rice farming, while many more live on floating villages - whole communities set adrift along the river. Life for people here is ruled by water - too little rain and the rice production will fail, too much rain and the fishing industry will suffer as the rivers and lakes swell, making catching fish all the more difficult.

The British Red Cross has been helping children in the UK understand how precious clean water is, by comparing their experiences with Cambodia where many children die from water-related disease. To mark World Water Day, the Red Cross asked schoolchildren from both the UK and Cambodia to write water diaries to compare their experiences of this vital resource.

Read More - Reuters

 BALI, Indonesia, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) — Four countries in Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have suffered 9 billion U.S. dollars economic loss annually due to poor implementation of sanitation, about 2 percent of their combined GDP, a recent study conducted by the World Bank has said.

The study said that Indonesia, the biggest Southeast Asia economy, had suffered the most losses of 6.3 billion U.S. dollar per year.

Indonesia has struggled to save its state budget from the impact of the global economic slowdown, soaring oil price and commodities, as well as high inflation pressure. The government has planned to widen the budget deficit from 1.7 percent of the GDP or 73.3 trillion rupiah (about 7.97 billion U.S. dollars) to 2percent of the GDP or 83.7 trillion rupiah (some 9.1 billion U.S. dollars).

Read More -  China View