200,000 people defecate in the open
by Shanika SRIYANANDA
Nearly 200,000 people still defecate openly in Sri Lanka, a spokesman
for the Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ) and Friends of the Earth
Sri Lanka, said.
Executive Director CEJ, Hemantha Withanage said that according to the
public perspectives' study conducted by the CEJ it had been found that
hundreds of schools do not have proper toilets, female students and
teachers especially are affected as a result of this situation. Most
cities have poorly maintained toilets. Many toilets built in the Dry
Zone are not used due to lack of water and they have been converted into
animal shelters and most plantation workers and families are compelled
to share only one or two toilets for many line houses.
"Though the situation in Sri Lanka is far better than South Asia we
need to address the remaining issues relating to water and sanitation",
he said.
The United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aims at
achieving a 50 percent reduction in the number of people who do not have
proper sanitation by 2015. The fourth South Asian Conference on
Sanitation in Sri Lanka
(SACOSAN IV) which will be held from April 4 to 8 will bring over 500
experts and SAARC Ministers dealing with water and sanitation to discuss
the future course of action to meet the MDG goal by 2015.He said that
SACOSAN was to monitor the progress achieved in the South Asia region
and it would provide political support of the South Asian nations to
achieve the MDG targets.
However, WaterAid's Regional Advocacy and Policy Advisor for South
Asia Mustafa Talpur, commending Sri Lanka's achievement in providing
safe drinking water and better sanitation has warned all countries in
South Asia except the Maldives and Sri Lanka which were currently off
track to meet the MDG target to halve the proportion of people living
without access to a toilet.
"With every second a person obliged to defecate in the open and every
eighth person having little or no choice but to drink contaminated
water, the promises and resolutions passed by these nations have not
been clearly realised", he said.
Mustafa called upon the governments of SAARC countries to meet the
sanitation commitments set out in the Delhi Declaration by setting clear
budget allocations, providing cost-effective interventions and targeting
resources towards poor and unserved communities and putting in place
effective monitoring and measuring procedures at national level to
increase accountability.
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