Karachi: 42% of city’s population without proper toilet drainage

[Naveed Yaseen]

World Toilet Day to be observed today:
By Amar Guriro
KARACHI: Around 42 percent of the city’s total population living in 539 slums would observe World Toilet Day on Thursday without having access to a proper toilet and appropriate sanitation system. The worsening sanitation system has affected the health of these slum dwellers and the recent diarrhoeal outbreak has claimed lives of three children in the past 10 days in the city’s second biggest slum, Machhar Colony.

In 2001, the World Toilet Organisation dubbed November 19 as ‘World Toilet Day’ to raise awareness about the importance of toilets.

To highlight the sufferings of people who do not have access to a basic sanitation system, this scribe visited Machhar Colony. During the visit, it was discovered that despite tall claims made by the government to make Pakistan Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2013, several people in this slum are still involved in open defecation, and those who have a toilet, are without a proper drainage system to flush human waste. This situation has resulted in killing three children in the last ten days.

However, Dr Aisha Siddique of Mother and Child Heath Centre, operated by Concern for Children Trust, said, “I only have information about a four-month old, Mehwish Habibullah, and despite several attempts, I have not been able to collect names of the other two children.”

In the Pakistani society, it is considered a taboo to refer to or talk about toilets and its related services. Therefore, the issue of public toilets is ignored, and that as a result is taking its toll on the general health and hygiene of the public. The World Toilet Day is an attempt to break the silence over such taboos and curb the worsening situation.

While visiting the colony that is located just on the edges of the Arabian Sea in the backwaters of Karachi Port, this scribe also found that some of the underprivileged residents have constructed makeshift toilets. These toilets are made with pieces of cloth and some wood, dumping the waste directly into the seawater beneath them, creating an open cesspool, which provides a haven for bacteria and diseases.

Such colonies in the country could possibly be a part of the official figures of United Nations Environment Programme, which says that about 2.4 billion people globally do not have access to any latrines.

Although in 2007, the federal government of Pakistan had announced that under the Khushhal Pakistan Fund, an amount of $200 million would be used through the Rural Support Programme for ODF in different parts of the country, but it seems that these announcements were made in vain and nothing has been done so far.

If one hopes to find better conditions in the planned areas of the city, they are destined to be disappointed, as even the commercial hubs, including shopping malls, bus stops, railway stations and places like parks lack proper public toilet facilities.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg12_7