Kiribati’s North Tarawa declared first open defecation free island in the Pacific

Everyone on North Tarawa now has access to improved sanitation. Photo: ABC Radio Australia / UNICEF Pacific.

North Tarawa in Kiribati is the first island in the Pacific to be declared open defecation free, thanks to the “Kiriwatsan I Project”. The Ministry of Public Works is implementing this project with technical support from UNICEF and funding from the European Union.

North Tarawa is made up of a string of islets with a combined population of 6,102 (2010) and a land area of 15.26 sq.km.  Previously about 64 per cent of people used the beaches and mangroves for defecation and dumping their rubbish.

UNICEF spokeswoman Nuzhat Shahzadi says that diarrhoeal diseases cause 15 per cent of the deaths of children under five in Kiribati.

In March 2013, North Tarawa adopted the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach following a training of trainers course conducted by Dr Kamal Kar. The CLTS pioneer wrote that he had convinced Kiribati President Anote Tong to set December 2015 as the target date for the whole nation to become open defecation free.

The villagers of North Tarawa dig shallow pits and use local materials like brick and coconut leaves to build the toilet superstructure. They keep water and soap in one corner. After using the toilet, the villagers sprinkle ash to stop the smell and flies getting in, and then keep it covered.

Ms Shahzadi said that the women and girls were very happy that no longer have to go out on the beach in the middle of the night if they need to use the toilet.

Related web sites:

• IDS – Community-Led Total Sanitation
• CLTS Foundation
• IRC – Pan-Africa Programme (CLTS/SLTS/ULTS programme)
• SuSanA Forum – CLTS

Source: UNICEF, 11 May 2013 ; Radio New Zealand International, 13 May 2013 ; ABC Radio Australia, 14 May 2013

Nepal: famous comedians star in tele-serial on community-led total sanitation

The famous Nepali comic duo Madan Krishna Shrestha and Haribansha Acharya aka Maha Jodi are starring in ‘Sugandhapur’, a tele-serial with a message motivating people not to defecate in the open.

Sugandhapur poster

The premiere show of the tele-film was organised at the Russian Cultural Centre, Kamalpokhari on 30 June 2010. Jointly produced by Mahasanchar and Plan Nepal, it will be broadcast in two episodes on television channels. The film centres around a community led total sanitation approach, which focuses on ending open defecation. It also conveys a message of changing the hygiene behaviour of people. The shooting of entire film was done in a rural area of Biratnagar.

In the telefilm, Haribansa plays a mulish character named ‘Hari Lal’ and Madan Krishna plays the role of a Chief District Officer (CDO). In the telefilm, all the households in the village have toilets but Hari Lal refuses to construct one saying that this will destroys crops, which turns the entire village into ‘Durghandapur’ (stinking village). The CDO advises him, the members of Child Club take out a rally against him but it could not change the mindset of Hari Lal. Later, Hari Lal understands the importance of toilets when he himself gets sick due to open defecation and thereafter the village changes into ‘Sugandhapur’ (good smelling village).

Sharing his experience during the shooting Acharya said, “Many people from that area were motivated to make toilets in their homes just watching the shooting.” Revealing the present situation of Nepal, Donal Keane, country director of Plan Nepal stated, “Ten million people in Nepal defecate in the open and every year 10,000 children here die due to diarrhoeal diseases.” Plan Nepal has started community led total sanitation programmes since 2004 in different communities of Nepal. “We hope this tele-serial will be one of the effective mediums to motivate communities to maintain sanitation,” Keane added. A total of 70 communities have been declared open defecation area by Plan Nepal.

“Only 43 per cent people in Nepal have access to toilet. So we are moving ahead to improve this situation to meet the national target of sanitation for all by 2017,” expressed Binod Chandra Jha, Deputy Director General, Department of Water Supply and Sewerage.

Related web sites:

• MaHa Sanchar – official site of Madan Krishna Shrestha and Hari Bamsha Acharya
• Plan Nepal
• Community-led total sanitation – Nepal

Source: The Himalayan Times / NGO Forum, 02 Jul 2010 ; Kantipur / NGO Forum, 01 Jul 010

Pakistan: moving beyond open defecation free sanitation

CLTS Picture book. Plan International Pakistan

Pakistan has taken an important step towards improved sanitation through a major sector assessment and setting up of a core group that seeks to move communities beyond open defecation free (ODF) status. The Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach has already enabled more than 1,500 villages in Pakistan to achieve ODF status and is expected to reach 15,000 villages by June 2011. This will mean that a third of the rural population of Pakistan would be covered.

To consolidate this progress and scale up learning, a Core Group was formed in August 2008 to advise the government in policy refinement and implementation of its nation-wide sanitation policy. The Core Group includes senior officials from the key national ministries of Environment and Health, as well as Provincial Planning and Development Departments and international agencies, including WSP.

The group commissioned an assessment of CLTS pilots in nine villages in the country. The evidence gathered revealed that CLTS had the potential to motivate communities to achieve ODF status. However, it did not create demand for “improved sanitation,” which, according to the Joint Monitoring Program, implies use of sanitation facilities “that ensure hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact.

The surveyed communities were found using unimproved and unhygienic latrines without taking any substantial effort to upgrade or replace damaged latrines due to limited knowledge of different latrine options available at the household level.

A countrywide CLTS implementation strategy will be developed based on the recommendations of the review, and is likely to benefit all communities living in rural areas by 2015.

Source: WSP Access, Oct 2009

Reacting to this WSP news item, Prof. Duncan Mara noted in his blog:

‘So now we know what many of us had long suspected: the whole CLTS ‘process’ needs to be upgraded so as to ensure people get at least ‘improved’ sanitation. Actually what people need is ‘good’ sanitation and ‘improved’ does not necessarily mean ‘good’ (after all, ‘improved’ sanitation includes a “pit latrine with slab” − see here − and we’ve all seen hundreds of these that are far from satisfactory).’

Pakistan: stopping open defecation through behavioural change

“I remember the time when I’d get up to the chirping of the birds, walk across to a nearby field, relieve myself in the fresh, open air -undisturbed – go to the nearby canal, take a bath and then come home to a hearty breakfast… before going off to work in the fields,” said an old farmer.

“This is the mind-set against which we are working,” said Wasim Aslam, an activist striving to make 564 villages in Pakistan open defecation free (ODF).

Aslam is from Lodhran, one of the implementers of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) campaign initiated by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), and one 1,500 activists who have been trained to get the CLTS movement off the ground.

[...] The 1,500 trained activists are mostly men, but their success is in large measure due to the women behind them. Irfanullah, a local counsellor in Peshawar, said that had it not been for his wife, he would not have made any headway.

[...] “We want people to need a toilet. We don’t just give it to them as they may not necessarily use it. We work on their psychology,” said Aslam, adding that CLTS was first introduced in Pakistan in 2004.

[...] According to Javed Ali Khan, director-general of the Ministry of Environment, ODF initiatives have benefited about 1.12 million people. The practice of open defecation in rural areas came down from about 74 percent of the rural population in 1990, to 45 percent by 2006.

According to the Ministry of Environment, 73 percent of the population now has access to a latrine – 96 percent in urban areas, and 62 percent in rural areas.

CLTS is now included in the national sanitation policy, said [World Bank sanitation specialist] Alrai.

Source: IRIN, 12 Dec 2008

Pakistan: Municipality Heralds Water and Sanitation Reforms

The Chitral Municipality in the extreme north of Pakistan announced a reward of half a million Pakistani rupees (US$6,550) for the first Union that attained Open Defecation Free (ODF) status. Previously, sanitation schemes were put on priority and allocated 20 percent of annual development funds of the municipality to benefit 14 unions with a population of nearly 200,000 people. The resolution was passed following a presentation on Community Led Total Sanitation by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) to the municipality.

The municipal administration has also developed plans for the reduction of non-revenue water [...] already bills for water connections have been computerized [and all] domestic water connections [...] are metered. [B]illing at flat rates [will be replaced by] average tariff billing for households where meters were non-functional.

A governance framework is [planned to help] for the Water and Sanitation Unit [carry out] the reforms.

Source: Access, Nov 2008

India, Haryana: cleanliness conquers indignity in modern Kurukshetra war

In about 400 of the 417 villages in [Kurukshetra district, Haryana], people have stopped defecating in the open heralding a sanitation revolution in these parts.

Villagers in this district no longer greet each other the old way. They raise clenched fists and shout “Swachh gaon, swasth gaon” (Clean village, healthy village).

For those who failed to get the message when the fight against defecation in the open [...] women’s groups in various villages formed their own vigilance committees, armed with torches and sticks.

By now, the administration has completed work on about 32,000 out of [planned] 34,000-odd toilets.

[...] “We caught them, we shamed them, we didn’t fight with them physically, but what we did was enough,” says sarpanch (village head) Jasvinder Kaur. “We had announced a reward of Rs.500 to whoever caught someone defecating in the open. Since all those people ran away as soon as we shone our torches at their faces, no one got the reward,” she laughs.

[...] The women came up with a new slogan in these rallies – “Our daughter will be married only to a family that has a toilet at home”.

[..] As the women gathered to organise the sanitation campaign, it has had another unexpected welcome fallout in this district with the terrible population ratio of 850 women for every 1,000 men. “As the women get together, we can explain to them how bad female foeticide is,” says Jasvinder Kaur.

Source: IANS / Mangalorean, 03 Nov 2008

Bhutan: despite the “toilet revolution”, high coverage has not lead to high use

Having worked as a primary health care professional for over a decade, Dr. Damber Kumar Nirola, Psychiatrist at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH) has “witnessed a slow but steady “toilet revolution” over the years”. He personally witnessed the “the evolution of toilets from open fields to gunny sack structures to simple pits to ventilated pits to pour flush to water closet, and the most recent western type of commode”.

Dr. Nirola’s “earliest recollection of a “toilet” was a relatively flat stone located some fifty feet away from our house, which could fit at least three children at once. This stone was positioned in such a way that faeces would fall directly to the slope below. Open defecation was a problem only when it rained; we’d get soaked and also fall prey to leeches. Another problem were stray mongrels, which would appear behind us without warning to devour the fresh excreta, at times even offering to clean us up!”

In the 1990s a sanitation campaign was launched in Bhutan, which resulted by 2000 in “almost 100% latrine coverage”.

“In spite of such progress”, Dr. Nicola laments, “we still find our public toilets clogged with sticks and stones, and with faeces scattered on our footpaths even in cities! Something is amiss! Are we slipping back in time or have we failed to evolve with our toilets?”

“Although the provision of latrines is relatively high, the conditions are very poor and the amount of usage is low, ” says Ugyen Rinzine, chief engineer of the public health engineering division. Although rural people had adequate knowledge on water and sanitation-related diseases, there was little change in their behaviour. “This is because of a lack of appropriate communication approach with rural communities and the absence of choice of latrine technologies.”

In May 2008, the public health engineering division organised a workshop on rural sanitation, which discussed plans to implement a community led total sanitation (CLTS) strategy and proposals for a national rural sanitation and hygiene programme. A scoping study conducted by SNV Bhutan in 2007 found that the sanitation situation in community schools and religious institutions (temples and monastic schools) in Bhutan was poor.

The non-use of sanitation facilities is illustrated by the case of Trongsa town. “Despite having two ‘pay and use’ toilets, which have been out of use for about six years”. “Today, only a few dogs visit the one storey toilet in Thruepang” and “the municipal sweeper uses the other toilet as a residence”.

The public toilets were not used because of their location outside the main town area and because people weren’t willing to pay. “Although the municipal office had planned to repair and reuse the facilities, the municipality did not have funds”.

Sources: Dr Damber Kumar Nirola, Kuensel Online, 11 Aug 2008 ; Tandin Wangchuk, Kuensel Online, 01 May 2008 ; Tashi Dema, Kuensel Online, 07 Jul 2008

See also: Training on participatory approaches, Bhutan, IRC, Dec 2007

South Asian Sanitation edition of Waterlines

here are more people in south Asia without adequate sanitation than anywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, this is a region where great progress is being made, where there is much to learn about approaches that work, and where the optimism is tangible.

The July 2008 edition of Waterlines, which includes papers from IRC/WaterAid’s South Asian Sanitation conference in January 2008, features some of the most promising approaches. How has the replication of the Orangi small-bore sewerage project to other Pakistani cities worked out? Should total sanitation campaigns always be free of hardware subsidy? Learn about using teachers to run village sanitation campaigns. What are the health impacts in open-defecation free villages, one year after the campaign? These and other questions are discussed in this edition.

Waterlines
VOLUME 27 NUMBER 3 JULY 2008

• Crossfire: ‘Community-led total sanitation is the best method of achieving sustainable sanitation for all in rural areas’ – ARUMUGAM KALIMUTHU and YAKUB HOSSAIN
• Sanitation and hygiene in South Asia: Progress and challenges – CHRISTINE SIJBESMA
• Subsidy and sustainability in urban sanitation: The case of Quetta Katchi Abadis Environment Management Programme – SYED AYUB QUTUB, NASEEMA SALAM, KHALID SHAH and DAANISH ANJUM
• School-led sanitation promotion: Helping achieve total sanitation outcomes in Azad Jammu and Kashmir – FAROOQ KHAN, RABIA T. SYED, MOHAMMED RIAZ, DEIRDRE CASELLA and VICTOR KINYANJUI
• Cross-sectional health indicator study of open defecation-free villages in Madhya Pradesh, India – TAPAS CHAKMA, SAM GODFREY, J. BHATT, P.V. RAO, P. MESHRAM and S.B. SINGH

Pakistan: Children and women lead the way to ‘total sanitation’ in earthquake zone

The School-Led Total Sanitation project was piloted by UNICEF in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in mid-2007. Drawing from experience gathered by UNICEF and its partners, the programme initiates change by developing useful health and hygiene skills in school to encourage life-long positive habits.

“With this approach, we use teachers and children as entry points into the communities,” explains UNICEF Water and Sanitation Officer Victor Kinyanjui. “The idea is that children replicate sanitation and hygiene practices learnt at school into their families, and also advocate for the use of latrines. Teachers are also real opinion leaders, as they are educated and respected. People listen to them.

Read more: UNICEF, 28 Feb 2008

Bangladesh: Clean Living – TVE’s Earth Report examines Community Led Total Sanitation

In the International Year of Sanitation, Earth Report travels to Bangladesh to discover changing attitudes to hygiene. No more ‘open defecation’: instead of top-down solutions, the new Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach has eradicated open defecation in more than 300 villages. Earth Report investigates. The programme features CLTS guru Kamal Kar. Read the transcript and view a movie clip here.

Clean Living’ is broadcast on BBC World at the following times (all times quoted as UK time zone currently GMT):
Friday 14th March – 20:30, with repeats at 10:30 on Monday 17th March, 15:30 on Tuesday 18th, and 02:30 and 08:30 on Wednesday 19th.

Clean Living was produced with the help of the Department for International Development – Environment, Water & Sanitation, UN Water, UNICEF – Water, Environment and Sanitation, and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).

Read more

See also the BBC News item of 15 March 2008 based on Clean Living

Kamal Kar also appears in the Plan International video “Bangladesh Community Led Total Sanitation”. In 2004, Plan introduced CLTS in over 200 villages in the Dinajpur District of Bangladesh. By 2007, all villages in Plan’s target area had eliminated open defecation and the entire population now has access to hygienic latrines. The video highlights the crucial role of children and women in CLTS campaigns.