Total Sanitation By 2013
Bangladesh finds urban slums major hurdle to achieving target
Bangladesh has identified urban slums, floating people and coastal areas as the major hurdles for achieving ‘total sanitation by 2013’.
Officials and experts attending the 5th South Asian Conference on Sanitation at Katmandu on Wednesday said that the country’s target for ensuring basic sanitation for all could not be achieved by the current year with many people in the slums, coastal belts and hill tracts remaining outside the coverage.
Presiding over a session on community wide sanitation and sustainability at the conference, Bangladesh’s local government secretary Abu Alam Md Shahid Khan said that 100 per cent sanitation coverage was not achievable for a country like Bangladesh where more and more people were coming to cities for livelihood and also adding to the number of people living in slums.
He, however, claimed that the basic sanitation coverage was now around 96 per cent in Bangladesh and only four per cent of the people defecate in the open. Among the rest, around 56 per cent have access to improved latrines.
‘The total sanitation by 2013 is our dream. It is not achievable in the present context. Urban slums, floating people and hard-to-reach areas like hill tracts and coastal belts are the major challenges to be addressed to achieve the goal,’ Abu Alam, also leading the Bangladesh delegation, told New Age.
Bangladesh had a time-bound plan to achieve total sanitation by 2010, which was then shifted to 2013 and increased resources were mobilsed, according to the country paper presented in the three-day conference that began in the Nepalese city of Katmandu on Tuesday. The regional event would conclude today (Thursday) with a declaration.
The ministerial level conference has drawn politicians, government officials, civil society representatives and grassroots people from eight SAARC nations –Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Maldives—besides experts from the rest of the world.
Speakers at different technical sessions underlined the need for ensuring equity in terms of sanitation for both the rich and the poor communities. They said most of the countries in the region share common challenges that also included poverty in addressing the issue. Growing city slums, particularly in Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi and Kathmandu were a major concern for sanitation coverage, said the policy makers.
Water Aid Bangladesh country director Khairul Islam said Bangladesh should now concentrate more on safe latrines for all since almost half of the population do not have access to improved sanitation in the country. ‘Even human wastes from safe latrines in Dhaka city are exposed to canal water polluting the whole environment in some areas,’ he added.
Joint secretary of Bangladesh government KM Abdus Salam told a session on urban sanitation that the life style of sweepers who clean others’ toilets must be taken care of. The organisers should make sure that the sweepers have their representatives in such an event, he added.
The technical sessions focused, among others, on school sanitation, knowledge management, networking, reaching the unreached and media advocacy.
-With New Age input
