WASH news Asia & Pacific

KHALID GUL, Islamabad, June 23

More than 70 per cent schools in this south Kashmir district lack drinking water and toilet facilities. Out of 972 schools, 707 are without toilets while as 680 do not have a drinking water facility. Primary schools are the worst hit as out of 632, 536 are without toilet facility while as 528 schools don’t have the drinking water facility. (…)

Read all GreaterKashmir.com

The cleanest gram panchayat (local government body) at the block, district, divisional and state levels in the  north-western state of Himachal Pradesh (pop. 6 million) will be awarded cash prizes ranging from Rs 100,000 to Rs 1 million by the state government every year under the “Maharishi Valmiki Sampuran Swachhata Puraskar” reward scheme. The scheme has been introduced to motivate the state panchayati raj institutions in scaling up the Total Sanitation Campaign. Prizes will be awarded on 15 August each year.

Source: Meri News, 24 Jun 2008 and Govt of Himachal Pradesh, 23 Jun 2008

Safe water supply and sanitation in the tea gardens of the country is very poor, said the speakers at a consultation yesterday.

Moreover, the administrative barriers make it hard to carry out development programmes there, they added.

The stakeholder consultation on ‘Promotion of total sanitation in tea gardens’ was organised by NGO Forum for Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation at the conference room of the Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE) in the city.

The speakers urged both the government and the garden owners to carry out holistic approach for carrying out development programmes in tea gardens.

They said people of the tea gardens are living inhuman life due to lack of safe drinking water.

Speaking as chief guest Sheikh Khurshid Alam, secretary to Local Government Division, said water supply and sanitation in tea gardens is not that good, but it is not that the scenario cannot be improved by taking holistic approach.

“The owners employ workers in their gardens and it is their duty to provide them with safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities. The government would help them if they undertake projects for the betterment of sanitation in the area,” he added.

The secretary called for creating awareness among the people of tea gardens for taking safe water and using sanitary latrines.

Read more: Daily Star, 24 Jun 2008

The Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Smt. Meira Kumar has urged the Minister of Rural Development, Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh to take urgent steps to ensure that all dry latrines in rural areas are converted into water seal latrines by March 2009, which is also the target date for rehabilitation of remaining manual scavengers. She further mentioned that eradication of the practice of manual scavenging is an area of very high priority for our Government and is intended to be achieved through Enforcement of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, Conversion of dry latrines into water seal latrines – with Government support under relevant schemes and Rehabilitation of manual scavengers into alternative occupations – through the Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS).

She also said that the conversion of dry latrines is, however, key to eliminating the practice of manual scavenging.

Read More: PIB, 13 Jun 2008

KARACHI: Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Gulberg towns are best served and Gadap and Bin Qasim towns are worst served in terms of water and sanitation services.

These are the findings of the Citizen Report Card on the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board that surveyed 4,500 households of nine towns under the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program South Asia. The data was analyzed by the Public Affairs Foundation of India.

At the launch of the report card at a local hotel on Thursday, KWSB Managing Director Suleman Chandio conceded the findings and said that a CRC Cell would be set up to make it a routine exercise. “I would like to give preference to low-income settlements and katchi abadis for new water and sanitation lines,” he said. “I would like the Asian Development Bank’s Mega City Project to give special attention to these areas.”

Read More - Daily Times, 6 June 2008

A group of Indian women, rescued by the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation from the degrading task of manually cleaning toilets, joined leading fashion models on the catwalk before representatives from more than 150 countries at UN Headquarters in New York, USA. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs invited the group to meet with diplomats participating at the High-level Segment of the UN Economic and Social Commission (ECOSOC) (30 June - 3 July 2008).

The first Mission Sanitation — Fashion Fiesta was held in the Bulgarian Embassy in New Delhi on 31 October - 1 November 2007. Prince Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands was so impressed that he felt it needed greater exposure and pitched the idea to the United Nations as a way to promote the International Year of Sanitation.

The fashion show in New York was partly a tribute to Sulabh’s founder, Mr. Bindeshwar Pathak, from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which in a new 156-page report praised his for-profit, private-sector solution to an intractable social problem.

See a video of the event at UN Headquarters on 2 July 2008 here.

See earlier postings on this topic in Sanitation Updates here, here and here.

Below are videos of the Mission Sanitation fashion show and Sulabh’s Nai Disha programme for scavengers in Alwar, Rajasthan.

On June 5, the World Environment Day, Kerala’s Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan planned to launched the state-leg of the national campaign titled WASH, abbreviation for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. The year 2008 being the campaign year for sanitation, WASH aims at the improvement of water, sanitation and hygiene conditions for all.

(…) “In the first phase of the programme, we will give scientific inputs to anganwadi teachers on the best practices with respect to sanitation and hygiene and conservation of water bodies,” said E.P. Yesodharan, executive vice-president of KSCSTE. (…)

Read all newindpress.com

Bangalore, May 29: Nagasandra, a village 50 km from Bangalore in Doddaballapur taluk, isn’t any different from the hundreds of others surrounding it. But in a remote corner of this small village is a 1-acre banana plantation that has been part of a unique research project: a study on the effect of anthropogenic liquid waste on soil properties and crop growth. In lay-man terms, it is a study on how human urine can be used as fertilizer in agriculture.

G Sridevi, a second-year PhD student at the Department of Soil Sciences and Agricultural Chemistry, University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), GKVK, conducted a study on the effect of human urine on various crops under C A Srinivasa Murthy, professor at the department. Sridevi got the support of Prakash and his family, who own the plantation, to experiment on their field. However, her idea was met with resistance from villagers, who were unwilling to work with human waste. Along with an assistant, she adopted 150 banana plants of the 800 on Prakash’s plantation, and carried thousands of litres of urine from the village to the plantation.
Read More - Daijiworld

NIRAS, one of Denmark’s largest firms of consulting engineers and planners, has won a capacity building consultancy contract in the water sector in Sri Lanka, financed by Danida. NIRAS won the contract, worth DKK 7.3 million, against three Danish competitors - COWI, Grontmij-Carl Bro and Rambøll.

The consultancy is linked to the Danish mixed credits portfolio in Sri Lanka, which includes the Colombo Sewage Rehabilitation project and four other water supply and sanitation projects. It will involve assisting Sri Lankan authorities with managing information systems, reporting and tariff structures.

The Sri Lankan water authority has been decentralised and the regional centres need to be upgraded. The Sri Lankan government identified the need for capacity building, and the project was approved in principle in Copenhagen in 2006. The tender process is about to be finished.

Source: Development Today (subscription site), 29 June 2008

The discovery of significant household food shortages is just one of the crucial early findings of an ongoing assessment of the disaster relief effort by the UN, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Myanmar government, released on 24 June 2008.

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Some 60 percent of households reported inadequate access to clean drinking water.

Read more: IRIN, 25 Jun 2008