India, Delhi: how sexual violence against women is linked to water and sanitation

Girls under ten being have been raped while on their way to use a public toilet, say women living in Delhi’s slums. In one slum, boys hid in toilet cubicles at night waiting to rape those who entered. These are some of the incidents mentioned in a recent briefing note [1] based on research supported by WaterAid and the DFID-funded SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity).

The link between a lack of access to water and sanitation facilities and sexual violence against women is not well known and to date has received insufficient attention. The briefing note highlights this link within the context of urban slums in Delhi, and suggests how this problem can be addressed.

[1] Lennon, S. 2011. Fear and anger : perceptions of risks related to sexual violence against women linked to water and sanitation in Delhi, India. (SHARE briefing note). London, UK, SHARE, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 15 p. Available at: www.shareresearch.org/Resource/Details/violenceagainstwomen_india

Related news:

• Insecurity and indignity : women’s experiences in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, E-Source, 23 Jul 2010
• Ghana: stop violence against girls – build school toilets, E-Source, 21 Sep 2009

Related web sites:

• SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity)
• WSSCC – Gender and WASH
• IRC – Gender and Equity

India: land of many cell phones, fewer toilets

Rafiq Nagar, Mumbai. Every family has a cell phone, but no safe sanitation. Photo: Guy Walder, http://www.guywalder.com

In the wake of President Obama’s visit to India, AP journalist Ravi Nessman writes that “he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet”.

Interestingly, Nessman ends his article by suggesting that the spread of cell phones could empower slum dwellers to demand better sanitation services.

The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally.

And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.

Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.

[...]

It is a country buoyed by a vibrant business world of call centers and software developers, but hamstrung by a bloated, corrupt government that has failed to deliver the barest of services.

India, Mumbai: soon, bottled water may replace public taps

The state of Maharashtra plans to replace public water taps in the slums of its capital Mumbai by safer bottled water. Maharashtra also hopes to generate an extra US$ 171 million to improve rural water supply through a one Rupee (2 US dollar cents) surcharge on bottled mineral water. The plans were presented by Maharashtra’s water supply and sanitation minister Laxman Dhobale.

Slum dwellers will have to purchase drinking water at Rs 5 (11 US dollar cents) for a 20-litre can.

“Though it is dearer than tap water, it would help us in sorting out sanitation problems and control waterborne diseases,” Dhobale said. “Public water taps in slum pockets are the epicenter of unhygienic conditions due to the accumulation of water and mud.

The percentage of water contamination is also huge. The water booths will help us overcome such conditions and help in supplying pure water to the slums.”

Dhobale added, “Water supplied through the government machinery and municipal corporations is supplied at Rs10 [21 US dollar cents] per 1,000 litre, which is too cheap. But the residents will have to bear the additional cost for pure water.”

The minister also plans to earn Rs 8 billion (US$ 171 million) for the state by levying a surcharge on mineral water bottles.

“As per last year’s figures, mineral water consumption in Maharashtra is nearly 800 crore [8 billion] bottles per year. If we levy a surcharge of Re1 [2 US dollar cents] per one-litre bottle, Rs800 crore could be added to the state coffer.

The amount can be further used for bringing about an improvement in the water supply system,” he said.

The surcharge will be used to set up a laboratory for monitor water quality and to water treatment equipment for rural areas. Dhobale said he would present the proposal in a Cabinet meeting within two months.

Related web site: Maharashtra – Water Supply and Sanitation Department

Source: Surendra Gangan, DNA, 08 Jul 2010 ; Santosh Andhale, Mumbai Mirror, 03 Jul 2010

Indonesia, Jakarta: slums struggle with sanitation

In Jakarta’s northern Muara Angke coastal area, a lack of access to piped water has forced people to bathe and wash clothes using murky grey water from fish ponds.

“I don’t feel disgusted at all. I’ve gotten used to it,” Ibu Nunung, who shells mussels for a living, told IRIN outside her house in Muara Angke Blok Empang, a slum in the area.

Nunung said residents, many of whom live on less than US$2 a day, had to fork out the equivalent of up to $1 daily to buy clean water for drinking and cooking from vendors transporting water in jugs.

She admitted that itchy skin was a common problem among locals.

Jakarta, a city of 10 million people, is dotted with slums like the one in Muara Angke.

Many people live without running water in shanty towns built in the shadow of gleaming skyscrapers, and gutters are clogged with rubbish, causing foul smells.

“Poor sanitation, lack of access to clean water, overcrowding and poor nutrition are among [the] major problems in Jakarta, and the government’s commitment is needed to address these problems,” said Erlyn Sulistyaningsih, a project manager with Mercy Corps Indonesia.

Less than 50 percent of Jakarta’s residents have access to piped water, according to the NGO, which runs water, sanitation and health programmes in the city.

More than 75 percent of the city’s residents rely on shallow groundwater, but an official study found that 90 percent of shallow wells are contaminated with coliform bacteria or heavy metals, Mercy Corps said in a 2008 publication entitled Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy.

Jakarta produces 6,000 tons of waste each day, but can only manage 50 percent of it, it said.

Sulistyaningsih heads a project aimed at increasing access to sanitary facilities, including toilets, providing access to clean water, and educating child caregivers about nutrition in several villages in Jakarta and neighbouring Bekasi District.

“Our programme seeks to prevent diseases which are spread by the faeces-to-mouth route, and we hope it can be replicated by other communities,” she told IRIN.

Premature deaths

A study released by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme in 2008 revealed that only 57 percent of Indonesian households had easy access to a private and safe place to urinate and defecate in 2004.

Poor sanitation, including poor hygiene, causes at least 120 million disease episodes and 50,000 premature deaths annually, the report said.

The study also found that poor sanitation costs the Indonesian economy $6.3 billion per year, or equal to 2.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Nugroho Tri Utomo, head of the subdirectorate of drinking water and waste water at the National Development Planning Agency, said part of the problem was a lack of funding, with spending on sanitation accounting for only 1 percent of the city’s budget.

“Both the general public and authorities have yet to realize the importance of sanitation, not only to health but also to the economy,” he said.

Improvement plans under way

The government last month launched a programme to provide access to adequate sanitation to 80 percent of urban households by 2014.

The Settlement Sanitation Development Programme, estimated to cost $5.5 billion, aims to develop waste water services in 226 cities, build sanitary landfills serving 240 urban areas, and stop inundations in strategic urban locations covering 22,500 hectares.

Under a separate programme called the National Strategy for Community-Based Total Sanitation, launched in 2008, the government aims to provide access to sanitation and introduce more effective water treatment methods in 10,000 villages by 2012.

See also:

• Mercy Corps Indonesia - Ibu Rumyati, Making Behavior Change Possible in Urban Slums
• Community-led Total Sanitation – Indonesia
• Portal Sanitasi Indonesia

Source: IRIN, 16 Apr 2010

India: praying for rain as water wars break out

The monsoon is late, the wells are running dry and in the teeming city of Bhopal, water supply is now a deadly issue. In Bhopal’s Sanjay Nagar slum, three members of the Malviya family were hacked to death by angry neighbours who accused them of stealing water.

Across much of northern India, a late monsoon and the driest June for 83 years are exacerbating the effects of a widespread drought. India’s vast farming economy is on the verge of crisis. The lack of rain has hit northern areas most, but even in Mumbai, which has experienced heavy rainfall and flooding, authorities were forced to cut the water supply by 30% in the beginning of July 2009, as levels in the lakes serving the city ran perilously low.

Across the country, from Gujarat to Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, the state that claims to be “the rice bowl of India”, special prayers have been held for more rain after cumulative monsoon season figures fell 43% below average. India’s agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar, said the country was facing a drought-like situation that was a “matter for concern”, with serious problems developing in states such as Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

In Bhopal, the population of 1.8 million has been rationed to 30 minutes of water supply every other day since October 2008. That became one day in three as the monsoon failed to materialise. In nearby Indore the ration is half an hour’s supply every seven days.

Fights break out regularly in Bhopal, where 100,000 people rely solely on water tankers. [...] Not everyone gets a tanker delivery. The city has 380 registered slums, but there are numerous other shanties where people have to find their own methods. Some, like the Malviyas, tap into the main supply. Others cluster around the ventilation valves for the main pipelines that stick up out of the ground from place to place, trying to catch the small amounts of water leaking out. In the Balveer Nagar slum, 250 families have no supply at all. The women get up in the middle of the night to walk 2km to the nearest pumping station, where someone has removed a couple of bricks from the base to allow a steady flow of water to pour out.

A few communities have received help from non-governmental organisations. In the Arjun Nagar slum, a borewell has been drilled down 115 metres by Water Aid to provide water for 100 families, each paying 40 rupees (50p) a month. [...] Water Aid is working in 17 of the city’s 380 registered slums, providing water and sanitation.

Source: Guardian, 12 Jul 2009 ; BBC, 07 Jul 2009

India, New Delhi: the poor pay more for water than the rich

The inability of the poor to pay is the primary reason [non-governmental organizations and] politicians give against privatization of water supply services. But in India’s capital, it is the poor that sometimes pay more, with government inertia spawning a massive private water supply operation.

[Most residents] of Sangam Vihar [pop. 400,000 - 700,000], a sprawling, mostly low-income, south Delhi neighbourhood that city officials call unauthorized [...] aren’t connected to the network of state water utility Delhi Jal Board (DJB). Result: growth of illegal, private water supply operations. Rashid Khan [...] says he and his family depend on water piped twice a week by “a private contractor” into his small home. The contractor charges between Rs300 and Rs500 a month from a family, depending on its size, he says.

[...] The water situation in Sangam Vihar is clearly an example of a paradox in urban water supply in India—the government subsidizes water supply but these are extended only to those that have metered connections, something that the poorest of the poor in cities do not have. This means, people such as Ramhet, who earn about Rs5,000 a month, pay Rs350 a month for water, while people in affluent localities pay as low as Rs100 per month.

“It is a fact that it is the poor that are paying the most. But the payment is in distress, not by choice. In Delhi, there is no democratic distribution. There is no need-based distribution,” admits Delhi Jal Board chief executive officer Ramesh Negi.

Some of the so-called private contractors in Sangam Vihar have dug borewells and connected them to several houses in the locality through water-supply pipes, according to residents.

One side effect of the borewells is a depleting water table. Across Delhi, the water table has fallen by some 2-8m in the past one decade, according to Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

According to Usha P. Raghupathi, a professor at National Institute for Urban Affairs, a New Delhi-based think tank, until two years ago, her water bill was in the range of Rs20-Rs30 a month. “I spend Rs100 on petrol a day. We don’t need the subsidy.” Raghupathi currently pays between Rs200 and Rs250 a month for water for a household of three people, less than Ramhet and his family of four.

Raghupathi says most of the noise to increase water tariffs is made by people who can afford to pay. “Willingness to pay depends on how acute the need is. It is not the capacity to pay,” says Raghupathi.

Most arguments against the privatization of water revolve around two central themes: water is a common resource that should be with the state, and privatizing a monopoly will lead to sharp increase in user charges.

For Ramhet and his neighbours, the lack of metered water connections is emblematic of a deeper malaise. As increased immigration forces people like him to move to the cities, it is creating a floating population with little or no papers and, therefore, little voice.

Source: Rahul Chandran, LiveMint.com, 02 May 2009

Indonesia: Educating Kids for a Healthy Future

By teaching children proper hygiene practices, a teacher educates and improves the health of poor river communities.

[...] For 11 years, Nurhayati, or Teacher Nur has been teaching proper hygiene practices and caring for the environment to her students in communities along the Kali Malang and Sunter riverbanks in Jakarta. She also encourages residents to use the public toilets built by the government.

[...] Today, even with public toilets, the communities’ onslaught to the environment continues. Teacher Nur brings her classes by the river to show her students the murky water and floating garbage as evidence of the communities’ indiscreet waste disposal.

[...] Indonesia has about 66 million people practicing open defecation (OD), more than one-third of the country’s total population. Next to India, it is the most OD-prevalent country in the world. .

Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital with a population of almost 10 million, obtains about 80% of its fresh water supply from the Citarum River [often called the world's most polluted river]. [...] Slum communities clustered around [...] waterways contribute greatly to the city’s severe water pollution.

[Poor sanitation in Indonesia is a leading cause of] diarrhea [which] alone claims almost 100,000 babies’ lives every year.

Residents of the slum communities {living] along [...] riverbanks [...] cannot afford the most basic sanitation facilities, [and] dispose of their wastes directly into the waterways.

[...] At school, Teacher Nur’s students wash their hands and brush their teeth together, while singing songs about hygiene and cleanliness. But her greatest accomplishment is that her students bring the lessons they have learned in school into their homes and share them with the entire household.

Since the government built the public facilities, Nurul, a girl and one of Teacher Nur’s students, and her mother have been using them everyday.

[...] The public toilets are not enough. Nurul and her mother have to stand in line for hours before they can use the facilities. Furthermore, some public toilets require a certain fee and most poor families have to scrimp for the costs. Nurul said, “I must pay 500 (rupiahs) to take a shower and another 500 to use the toilet. If it’s full, we shower outside. My mother pumps out water from the deep well.”

In 2008, in line with the United Nations’ Year of Sanitation, Indonesia launched a National Strategy for Community-Based Total Sanitation, which aims to provide 10,000 communities with access to clean water and sanitation by 2012. [The Asian Development Bank] ADB [...] is also working with the Indonesian government on increasing sanitation coverage in the country.

Source: Cezar Tigno, ADB, Feb 2009

Pakistan, Karachi: slum dwellers fear impotence from water-purifying tablets

“I cannot take these tablets as my husband has said no,” said Shahida, a young housewife in Machar Colony, Karachi’s largest slum. Shahida told Farooq Sultana, a community mobiliser and saleswoman for Saafwater, that her husband suspected the water-purifying tablets were birth control pills.

“It’s not a new excuse. People here have this misconception that we are selling them contraceptive pills and men think that somehow these tablets will interfere with their reproductive systems,” said Sultana.

Machar Colony is the biggest slum in Karachi, housing 700,000 of the city’s 16 million people. Given its illegal status, the colony has no access to civic amenities and is never mentioned in government [improvement] plans and policies aimed at improving the city.

[...] SaafWater [...] began working [in Machar Colony] in August 2008 [...] by employing local women and training them in [...] health and hygiene-related issues. “We sell chlorine tablets. A week’s supply costs Rs30 [less than 37 US cents] and each tablet purifies up to 25l of water.” Sultana [said] “Before, even I had no clue about clean water. I have lived in this colony for a long time and we do not have gas, electricity or a proper water supply. The tap water we get comes from a line buried deep within a sewage drain and as a result, the potable water mixes with toxic water.”

She says it was normal for her to filter the water through a cloth and drink it. “We cannot boil the water as we do not have gas in our houses and rely on wood or gas cylinders, which are expensive and we have limited means,” says Sultana.

[...] Unsafe water killed at least 20,000 children each year in Karachi, said [Asma Shariq, a medical consultant at the CFC Mother and Child Health Centre] with diarrhoea the leading cause of child mortality.

“[...] I tell them again and again to either boil the water or use water purification tablets but they always come up with excuses,” said Shariq. She said most blamed expensive fuel wood while others said the water tasted bitter when boiled. “However, the major excuse that these women have is that they fear these tablets will render [the men] impotent.”

[..] Sultana said: ” I have had doors slammed in my face but deep inside I know that out of 100 families if I am able to convince even two to use these tablets, I have done my part in saving someone’s life.”

Source: IRIN, 19 Feb 2009

Bangladesh: ADB Reinforces Support for Urban Development

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing additional funds to improve the basic services and infrastructure in small and medium-sized towns of Bangladesh.

As many as 3.8 million people are expected to benefit from the Second Urban Governance and Infrastructure Improvement (Sector) Project which will expand access to and delivery of water, sanitation, solid waste management and other urban services in an initial 35 targeted towns, including slum areas. More towns will be included as the project is implemented.

The $87 million loan, sourced from ADB’s Special Funds, will be released in phases. The fund disbursements to each town are linked to governance reform and improvement in urban services.

The project draws on lessons from the ongoing Urban Governance and Infrastructure Improvement (Sector) Project which found that improvements to urban infrastructure and services are more effective and lasting when they are tied to governance reforms.

[...] Each participating town will have to use at least 5% of their allocated funds to improve basic services in slum areas, while gender action plans will be established to ensure women are fully involved in governance and planning process.

The project expects increases in income, employment, and land values in all participating towns by 2015, with 60% of residents in targeted slums to have access to improved services.

German development institutions, Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), will provide cofinancing equivalent to $4.7 million and $36.1 million respectively. The government of Bangladesh will provide an additional $31.7 million. The towns involved in the project will supply the equivalent of $7.3 million, and the beneficiaries an additional $700,000.

The project will be carried out from 2009 to 2014 in three phases with the government, ADB, GTZ and KfW jointly reviewing progress at least twice a year.

Source: ADB, 29 Oct 2008

India, Hyderabad: Is fecal contamination of drinking water after collection associated with household water handling and hygiene practices?

Eshcol, J., Mahapatra, P. and Keshapagu, S. (2009). Is fecal contamination of drinking water after collection associated with household water handling and hygiene practices? A study of urban slum households in Hyderabad, India. Journal of water and health ; vol. 7, no. 1 ; p. 145-154. doi:10.2166/wh.2009.094

Contact: Jayasheel Eshcol, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, 1216 MERF, Iowa City, IA 52317, USA Tel.: +1 319 321 4963 E-mail: jayasheel-eshcol@uiowa.edu

Abstract

Water-borne illness, primarily caused by fecal contamination of drinking water, is a major health burden in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Currently drinking water is treated at the reservoir level and supplied on alternate days, necessitating storage in households for up to 48 hrs. We hypothesized that fecal contamination occurs principally during storage due to poor water handling. In this study we tested for coliform bacteria in water samples collected at distribution points as household storage containers were filled, and then tested containers in the same households 24-36 hours after collection. We also conducted an observational survey to make an assessment of water handling and hygiene. Ninety-two percent (47/51) of samples tested at supply points were adequately chlorinated and bacterial contamination was found in two samples with no residual chlorine. Samples collected from household storage containers showed an increase in contamination in 18/50 houses (36%). Households with contaminated stored samples did not show significant differences in demographics, water handling, hygiene practices, or sanitation. Nevertheless, the dramatic increase in contamination after collection indicates that until an uninterrupted water supply is possible, the point at which the biggest health impact can be made is at the household level.