Sanitation Updates

KENDRAPARA, May 13: Ever heard of theft of a pucca house?

The sarpanch of backward Gangapada gram panchayat has alleged that concrete structured community latrines were stolen from the village.   (…)    “I was shocked to be informed that there is no physical trace of the recently built latrines. Thus I take it for granted that either theft has occurred or central grants spent for the purpose were gobbled up by the then PRI members. (…) “

Read all Statesman News Service

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

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

The Yamuna is the largest tributary of the revered Ganges, but its polluted waters pose an increasing health hazard to the Indian capital. Now campaigners are calling for urgent action to clean it up.

The Yamuna, which passes through Delhi, represents both a terrible irony and one of India’s great unsung scandals. The largest tributary of the revered Ganges, the Yamuna is one of the country’s most sacred rivers, and yet perhaps also its dirtiest. Hundreds of millions of pounds of public and private money has been spent on projects to clean the river and yet where it passes Delhi it is dark, stinking and lifeless - as dead as a handful of ashes.

“It’s a terrible irony. In the Hindu religion we are supposed to venerate rivers. The Yamuna is one of the most worshipped,” said Vimlendu Jha, who heads a campaign group called We For Yamuna. “And yet every day 950 million gallons of sewage is pumped into the river. The faecal coliform [bacteria from human waste] count is 100,000 times what is considered safe for bathing… No politician wants to do anything. It has gone from bad to worse.”

Read more: Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, 01 May 2008

NEW DELHI: India continues to have the world’s highest number of polio cases this year, with the disease having crippled more children till April than it did during the same period in 2007.

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The children who got polio despite multiple doses, did not get enough number of doses to develop adequate protection to polio virus,” a health ministry official said. According to experts, children living in areas with poor environmental sanitation and high population density, like the endemic districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, need higher doses of polio vaccine to be adequately protected against the virus as they are more frequently exposed to polio virus under these circumstances.

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Dear Friends,

On behalf of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP), I am pleased to inform you that our organization has been chosen a finalist in the Ashoka’s Changemakers “Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis” competition.

Read More - Reuters

India produces an estimated 900 million litres of urine every day, of which an ample volume is piddled in public spaces — on walls, inside parks, besides rail tracks, and, sometimes, even on the back seat of cabs. Men mostly do the mischief, a popular, intricate ritual with its own rules. First, there is the selection of a place, followed by a flurry of movements — a quick trot, the slight parting of legs (or a squat), the unzipping of trousers or hitching up of clothing with lightning speed, and then the familiar gushing sound.

Women, given the skewed definition of shame in our culture, are not at liberty to partake of such rituals. They do so, only when they are left without choice, or toilets.

Read More - Telegraph India

Article Date: 08 Apr 2008 - 4:00 PDT

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) celebrated the success of their five-year partnership to enhance environment safety and hygiene conditions in thousands of schools across Jharkhand and Karnataka. The close-of-project dissemination meeting was held today at the UNDP Conference Hall in Delhi. (…)

Over the period from September 2003 - February 2008, the School Water and Sanitation Towards Hygiene and Health - Putting Lessons Learned to use (SWASTHH-PLUS) programme, worked in partnership with the Government of India and state governments to improve school facilities, providing sanitary school conditions and hygiene lessons for almost a million children in more than 5500 public schools.

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One of the activities that UNICEF India carried out in the SWASTHH-PLUS programme, was the introduction of a  bio-intensive gardening in schools in Karnataka.

While India celebrates the International Year of Sanitation, little has been done for the abolition of the degrading work of manual scavenging.

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Bezwada Wilson, national convenor of Safai Karamachari Andolan, told Hardnews, “For us it’s not just about how much they (scavengers) earn. We are looking at it as a work below human dignity. They are also prone to many diseases and obviously they don’t have enough money for their treatment. We stand against the system of the society where one is to defecate and other is to clean. We are looking forward to eradicating this system of scavenging by 2010.”

Read More - Hardnews

TIRUNELVELI: Of one lakh toilets planned under the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) in the district, 86,644 have been constructed at houses and another 551 at women sanitary complexes in rural areas with the objective of eradicating open defecation, said the District Collector G Prakash.

A total of 509 toilets have been constructed in schools against the district administration’s target of 532. Moreover, toilets have been constructed in all the anganvadis in the district, the Collector said.

Read More - Newindpress