Punjab

‘100,000 toilets to be built in S Punjab’

Housing secretary says women staffers carrying out survey at tehsil level

APP December 21, 2020

Warning on the wall: Graffiti on a wall in Karachi warning passers-by not to attend to nature’s call. Due to a lack of public toilets, people often have to excrete near walls. PHOTO: FILE

MULTAN:

Keeping in view scarcity of lavatories, especially in villages, the Housing, Urban Development and Public Health Engineering Department plan to construct 100,000 toilets in South Punjab within a year.

South Punjab Housing Secretary Liaqat Ali Chatha said on Sunday that a survey was being conducted at the tehsil level to estimate the shortage of the facility.

He said that under the initiative to build 100,000 toilets in the region within a year, the government would extend financial assistance of Rs75,000 to a family for the purpose.

Female staffers of Public Health Engineering Department were carrying out the survey, the secretary said, adding that he would give a presentation to Chief Minister Usman Buzdar in the coming week.

The World Bank was funding another project under which 3,000 lavatories would be constructed in the province, he said. Sanitary fittings were provided to the families under the project, Mr Chatha maintained.

It was a national cause and a very important issue for human health, the secretary said, noting that lack of toilets was still a common problem in the villages.

About 2.4 billion people or one-third of the world's population lack access to hygienic sanitation facilities and about one billion people have to resort to open defecation. Going out in fields, bushes, forests, open bodies of water or other open spaces rather than using the toilet is a leading cause of diarrhoea, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The diarrhoea death toll stood at around 6,000 a day and mostly young children became victim of the disease, it said.

In South Asia, about one billion people lacked access to improved sanitation. The number is more than any other region in the world.

Half of global malnutrition cases were linked to chronic diarrhoea caused by lack of clean water, decent sanitation and good hygiene, including hand washing with soap. The extent of the global stunting crisis and scarce access to clean water and decent toilets was having an enormous impact on the future of millions of children suffering from malnutrition.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2020.