Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Health, Poverty & SDGs, Water & Sanitation

ENVIRONMENT-AFGHANISTAN: Goodbye Stinky, Dry Latrines

Aparna Srivastava Reddy

KABUL, Sep 28 2007 (IPS) - The pervasive smell of human ordure is warning enough that this is a city that badly needs a sanitation system.

Rapid development – and the immigration it attracts – has seen the population of Afghanistan’s historic capital multiply from one million to about 4.5 million over the past five years, explains Rohullah Aman, Kabul’s mayor.

Kabul’s existing sanitation system, consisting largely of dry latrines emptying into underground storage vaults, can no longer cope because of sheer population pressure and because accumulated waste is no longer being emptied regularly.

When Kabul was a thinly-populated town, it was feasible and safe for donkey carts to carry the waste out of town, explains Ghulam Sakhi Noorzad, former mayor and now advisor at the presidential palace. Rapid urbanisation, high population density and lack of proper roads have made this practice infeasible. In fact, there are no donkey carts on the roads of Kabul today.

A few garbage trucks struggle to get the job done but are far from adequate, says Mumtaz Omarzai, a young sanitation engineer. For the dry vault system to work there must be a market for the waste and that market is shrinking fast as the farmers who use it for manure are selling off their lands, making way for an expanding city, he adds.

Little wonder then that a foul stench persists over the dusty streets and that the Kabul river, once famed for its sparkling, snow-fed waters, has turned into a giant open sewer. And, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), this is the reason why diarrhoeal diseases abound. According to Kabul municipality officials, less than five percent of the households have sewer connections. Most people use the dry vault toilets that are also common in much of Central Asia and China. However, the men generally prefer open areas and it is the women and small children who use the household toilets.

Sewer lines are costly to build in Kabul’s hilly terrain and a lack of water supply and power rule them out anyway. Pit latrines and septic tanks are not an option because the water can easily leach into the soil and contaminate groundwater – on which the residents depend on, almost exclusively, for their water supply.

However, a new experiment in modern, sustainable and eco-friendly toilet systems, evolved in neighbouring India, is proving effective in the Afghan capital.

Popularly known as the Sulabh technology this ‘twin pit’ system uses very little water. The two pits are used alternately and an attached biogas digester produces methane from the waste that can be burned for lighting and heating, says Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, an India-based voluntary agency that is building toilet complexes in Kabul.

Pathak believes that Sulabh’s affordable, appropriate technology is ideal for the needs and conditions of Afghanistan and he is certain that the Kabul model will spread through Afghanistan, since it is suitable for both household toilets and larger public facilities.

&#39&#39It’s a close loop technology with no wastes generated and it is self sustaining,’’ explains India’s ambassador to Afghanistan Rakesh Sood. The ambassador is involved because New Delhi provided aid worth one million dollars to enable Sulabh to build five 20-seat toilet complexes in the busiest areas of Kabul. Completed a few months ago these pay-and-use toilets are already serving 5,000 people on average daily.

"A visitor pays two Afghanis (0.04 US cents) per use. We were expecting some 300 users per day at each complex. But more than a thousand people visit these facilities everyday and the five complexes are already earning 11,000 Afghanis (220 dollars) a day, making them totally self sustaining," says Sushmita Shekhar of Sulabh. She said the local response was overwhelming – especially from the women.

Saajida who sells stationery from a small cart in Farosh Gah, a busy market area, is grateful to the Sulabh toilet because the local culture does not permit women to use open areas. "Earlier, in emergencies, I had to travel to my relative’s house, two km from here. Now I can use Sulabh (Sulabh, which means ‘easily available’ in the Hindi langauge, is already a part of local vocabulary in Kabul),’’ she says from behind her veil.

Omarzai, who was among the 35 local men and women trained by Sulabh to run the project, lives near a migrant camp on the outskirts of Kabul. "It disturbs me to see these people drink water from an open canal and use makeshift dry toilets,’’ he said. ‘’Now that I have learnt this technology I would like to help build more such toilets across the country."

In the holy month of Ramadan it is common to see devout Muslims pray wherever they are during the day. But it is uncommon to see them pray on the portico of a public toilet – a Sulabh facility in the Deh Afghanan area. "It is great to have these Sulabh toilets… now we only want mosques built next to them,’’ said an elderly man commenting on the cleanliness of the facility.