Inaugurating the MDG Acceleration Framework (MAF) for Sanitation here on Friday, Prime Minister Bhattarai said that the government is committed for achieving the MDGs.[break]
Stating that statistics show that every year, some 10,500 children under-five years of age die of diarrhea, he said out of the patients visiting the Out patients Department (OPD) of the hospitals in the country, 80 per cent of them are victims of water and sanitation related diseases.
However, claiming that the country of late has made a great achievement in the sanitation sector, the Prime Minister said that Open Defecation Free (ODF) campaign is taking a momentum in the country.
Prime Minister Bhattarai said that as per the recent statistics, only 62 per cent households have toilets and the remaining 38 per cent households are compelled to defecate in open places.
He said though the country has made a remarkable progress in sanitation sector in recent years, poor families, families of Dalits and indigenous communities, people of remote areas and districts in Tarai area are seen with less access to sanitation.
Stating that the government has a target to reach 100 per cent of the households to the access of sanitation by 2017, the Prime Minister said that the government last year has implemented a sanitation master plan in the participation of all donor agencies and all partners to achieve the goals.
He added the master plan could be expected as a milestone to achieve the national goal. The Prime Minister expressed the confidence that the sanitation sector will be intensified if the school with toilet and the open defecation free campaign are moved ahead as a social movement without grant in the districts, VDCs and municipalities by mobilising local body resources and leadership with commitment and involvement of the parties.
He also said the sanitation movement will be certainly become successful if the campaign is run by making a special cooperation package from the local level for the extremely poor and the target class.
NPC member Janakraj Shah said this is a worse challenge for us that we see deaths of children under-five years of age due to diarrhea, lack of clean drinking water and diseases from it, lack of gender friendly toilets affecting girl´s presence in schools for lack of sanitation management.
Another NPC Member Shiva Kumar Rai said as there are only 1070 hours left for meeting the target, cooperation of all is expected for it.
UNDP representative in Nepal Robert Piper was of the view that the campaign was interrelated issue to meet the MDG is sanitation in Nepal. UNICEF representative in Nepal, Hanna Singer informed that UNICEF has also been cooperating in sanitation sector in Nepal.
Joint Secretary Gopinath Mainali discussed the efforts made by Nepal government to meet the MDGs. PM Bhattarai handed over certificates to secretaries of ministries of education, health and population, urban development, local development, and NPC to make the implementation on MDGs more effective.
Nepal has so far declared open defecation free places in 600 VDCs, six municipalities and 2,000 schools.
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