Defecation facility adds to the poor's woe

SIRAHA, June 22: Communities seeking loans for earning a living for their families and their woes in repaying it are a common phenomenon in community development projects. In Siraha, even defecating has become a burden to the poor residents of the district due to District Development Committee's (DDC) dictate of constructing a toilet in each household.

The crisis came into the house of these poverty-stricken residents of the district after the launch of open defecation free (ODF) district campaign by the DDC.The campaign envisions of an ODF Siraha by the end of 2015. However, this administrative decision has failed to consider the plight of the district's poor residents, who have been forced into taking loans on steep interest rates from their land lords for constructing toilets.

Most of these families manage their livelihood by working in landlords' farm fields under extreme labor conditions. And amid their struggle to feed their families, constructing a toilet has been unprecedented financial burden to them. The DDC has not provisioned aid for constructing toilets to the poor families.

One of such poor is Remani Sada - a Gada-3 resident. Her family is housed in hut that itself is on the verge of collapse as she has not been able to afford much-needed repairs to its roof. With the monsoon set in early this year, Remani's family is doomed for wet nights. Despite these more crucial repairs, she had to construct a toilet recently by taking Rs 10,000 loan from her landlord at a very high interest rate.

"We managed to construct a toilet for our family by taking loan at 60 per cent per annum interest rate. With such high interest rates, how is my family ever going to pay back it? I am deeply worried," said Remani who along with her husband works in landlord's farm to earn livelihood for their family of four.

"It has been hard for us to earn bread for our family. In such condition, how are we to pay Rs 500 monthly as interest? Nobody is there to understand the plights of poor," she rued. Jelabi Sada, another of the locals shared similar plight stating that "the government should either provide us interest-free loans or build public toilets for the Dalit community," he said adding that they were not against the campaign.

Meanwhile, the DDC has spent millions of rupees in the promotion of the campaign. These expenditures were made for printing pamphlets, promotional activities, establishing training centers, and for arranging tours for campaign officials, among others, it informed.

"It is challenging for Dalit and other poor communities to be a part of the ODF campaign. The campaign has forced them to take loans to construct toilets," acknowledged Ramesh Kumar Nidi, engineer at energy and sanitation department of DDC.

Gada, Padriya, Gorchari, Itaharwa, Chatari, Bhotraha and Lagadigadayani VDCs of the district have been already declared as ODF zone informed Nidi.

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