Around 50 percent of country's population is facing sanitation related hazards with rural poor more prone to it and suffering from diseases like diarrhoea and cholera, experts noted at a conclave of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) activists on Monday.
Jointly organised by Ministry of Environment, Water and Sanitation Programme-South Asia (WSP-SA), Unicef, WaterAid and Rural Support Programme Network (RSPN), the event is being attended by experts and sanitation champions amongst communities.
This gala of volunteers active to promote CLTS provides an opportunity to activists from India and Pakistan to share their views and set the future line of action to make localities Open Defecation Free (ODF).
"In Pakistan hardly above the 50 percent population has sanitation facilities and the rural poor are worse affected," said Secretary Ministry of Environment, Ijaz Qureshi speaking as the chief guest at the two-day conclave. "This situation is worrisome as lot of poor are suffering from poor sanitation related diseases like cholera and diarrhoea," he added.
Qureshi said Pakistan is 136th country at the global human development index and lack of facilities like sanitation and clean drinking water would hamper country's efforts to achieve the millennium development goals. He called for behavioural changes and a broader role of government departments and community activists to reach out to the neglected poor.
"This is weakness of our system that elite are benefited more than the poor, which we need to change," Ijaz Qureshi stressed. He rested great hopes with the community activists and said, their pioneer role in awakening masses to this hazard would help turn around the things.
He also called for enhancing allocations for health and sanitation sectors and asked the provincial governments to spend more in the sanitation projects. Kamal Kar, the Bangladeshi creator of the CLTS idea, urged the governments and the community networks to join hands for overcoming the sanitation hazards. He appreciated the communities' role in Pakistan comparing the 2004 situation with their present day activities.
"It is exciting," Kamal Kar said, praising the efforts of the local governments and Pakistani community and hoped, "Pakistan would be successful in achieving the open defecation free country status within next four to five years."
Started in 1999 from Bangladesh, Kamal Kar's idea of CLTS is now being implemented in 22 countries including Pakistan. Bangladesh reaped lot of benefits from this idea leading the South Asian region in provision of sanitation facilities.
Secretary Local Government Balochistan, Younas Durrani informed that provincial sanitation policy was almost ready for launching and implementation. "Sanitation is requirement of the day and we need to concentrate on it," he said and added, Sindh province has already formulated its sanitation policy that is being implemented.
WSP-SA Country Team Leader, Farhan Sami Khan said the conclave would go a long way in motivating community activists to make their localities open defecation free. He appreciated the government initiative of awarding the communities with prize once they make their areas open defecation free.
He said sanitation is problem of everybody and all the stakeholders need to join hands to overcome this problem. "I hope the conclave would prove to be a milestone in pooling efforts and making communities more pro-active," he said.
He mentioned to various community led projects and appreciated the efforts of communities seeing their enhanced future role to make the country open defecation free.
Comments
Comments are closed.