Presenting the MDG progress report this week, the team leader of the report preparation committee Jagdish Chandra Pokhrel said that the third indicator of the seventh goal of ensuring Environmental Sustainability is challenging as 15 percent people are lacking drinking water, whereas 38 percent still do not follow sanitation practices. [break]
Nepal´s sanitation coverage of 30 percent in 2000 improved to 62 percent in 2011, which exceeded the MDG target of 53 percent. After meeting the goal, another target was set to ensure total water and sanitation facility by 2017.
For the same, the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has accelerated efforts to meet the ODF target, say officials of the ministry. Till now, nine districts have been declared ODF, whereas Bhaktapur is set to be the tenth.
The number of people using toilet are highest in the hill region with 75 percent, whereas the corresponding figure for mountain region is 60 percent. The coverage is worse in the Tarai with only 49 percent. Almost 16 of the 20 Tarai districts are behind the national average in terms of sanitation facilities. Similarly, those districts are just 1.7 percent better than Far-western region.
The MDG report states that disparities between urban and rural areas as well as among geographical regions are very wide. While sanitation coverage in urban area increased from 80 percent to 91 percent over the last decade, that in rural areas rose from 25 percent to 55 percent.
Contrary to the drinking water facility, which is over 70 percent among all social groups, sanitation coverage has shown variation on the basis of ethnicity. It was revealed by the National Census 2011 that the Newar community has the highest 71.6 percent sanitation, whereas the Madhesi Dalits are at lowest end of the table with only 4.6 percent. An overall scenario shows that it is poor group who lack toilet in the country, admits the Joint Secretary of the MoUD Awadh Kishor Mishra.
Sanitation is not adequate in schools as 9000 schools still lack toilets, according to the flash report of the Ministry of Education. The lack of facility has negative affects and lack of sanitation is positively correlated with the diarrheal diseases and with the proportion of girls in secondary and tertiary education.
The annual growth rate of sanitation coverage is highly disappointing. In urban areas, the coverage was only about 1.0 percent over the last decade, while that in rural areas was 2.7 percent.
Growth in the urban areas was limited by rapid population growth and municipal government´s inattention to the sanitation needs of informal settlements such as slums and squatters areas.
Challenges
To achieve 80 percent sanitation coverage by 2015 and 100 percent by 2017, the annual rate must be increased from 2.9 percent to 4.5 percent. While about 85 percent of the country´s population has access to basic water supplies, the services of most urban water supply systems are not efficient and many rural water supply no longer functions.
Interview
Nepal will achieve sanitation target by 2017: Kishor Thapa
Secretary, MoUD
The overall trend shows that access to sanitation is dismal among poor people. What is the government doing to address the problem?
The sanitation coverage is comparatively low in the Tarai region, especially, among poor and Dalits. The government has collaborated with the non-government organizations for public housing program in the Tarai region, which also ensures that all those homeless people will have access to basic water and sanitation facilities. We have now moved above the subsidy program realizing that limited number of deprived groups is under extreme poverty and are unable to build a toilet. For the disabled, single women, senior citizens and extreme poor, the district water supply office and district development committees are authorized to take decisions.
If the government fails to meet 100 percent sanitation target by 2017, what strategy would it adopt to deal with the problem?
We, along with the donor agencies, are determined to achieve the ODF target by 2017. The MoUD wants to give a message that all households in Nepal will have toilet before the deadline. We are also working on post 2017 strategies from now. The total sanitation will be our next target as ODF is only one component of the sanitation cycle.
We are also hearing the arguments around that how can we be in status of ODF unless the exposure of human excreta to rivers is not stopped? Considering the same argument, the total sanitation program will aggressively work on segregating waste from water resources too. Similarly, the lack of adequate and proper public toilets has also caused open defecation in the urban areas even on the road side and sky bridges. Thus to guarantee water and soap in every public toilet is our next plan. Along with this, the solid waste management will be equally prioritized.
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