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HEALTH: Private Sector Boosts Public Toilets in Poorer Nations

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 2009 (IPS) - The United Nations is disappointed that most governments in the developing world have made relatively little progress in providing basic sanitation facilities to nearly 2.5 billion people who still have no access to toilets.

“The international community, national governments and the private and non-profit sectors still have much work to do between now and 2015 (the U.N.’s deadline),” warns Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

With most governments failing to meet their commitments, the private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are taking an increasingly significant role in building toilets, primarily in Asia and Africa.

The World Toilet Association (WTA), based in the South Korean capital of Seoul, is currently building toilets in 10 developing countries: Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan and China.

The toilets being built in villages in Laos and South Africa, for example, will cater to over 54,000, including 4,000 school children in rural areas.

Additionally, new toilets in the slums of Kenya will serve about 20,000 people who lack basic sanitation.

Song Young-Gon, WTA’s secretary-general, told IPS: “We are making great efforts to find various ways to improve sanitation through the provision of toilets.”

He said the construction of public toilets costs anywhere between one thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

These funds, he said, can be procured through governments, official development assistance (ODA), private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and private donations.

The lack of funding, he said, must never be a reason to quit working towards the improvement of sanitation.

“If we establish sound educational programmes and strong political will, funding will easily follow,” he added.

David Trouba of the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) told IPS that NGOs have a “tremendously valuable role to play”.

They can include sanitation and hygiene in their health programmes and help generate community demands for toilets.

They can generate demand for sanitation by helping communities understand its economic benefits, he added.

Additionally, these organisations can also use sanitary improvement as an entry point for community building and empowerment.

“They can look for win-win sanitation interventions that improve the lives of poor people while protecting the environment, and lobby government to operate proper disposal facilities for fecal sludge,” Trouba said.

And these organisations can also support community-based approaches that use social marketing techniques and respond to local preferences, facilitate ‘total sanitation’ approaches and partner with the private sector.

Asked what regions are urgently in need of assistance to meet the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals on sanitation by 2015, Trouba said 2.5 billion people, about 38 percent of the world’s population, remain without improved sanitation facilities.

“They are mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia,” he added.

Of the eight Millennium Development Goals – including the eradication of hunger and poverty eradication – safe drinking water and access to sanitation “remain the most neglected and most off-track of the MDG targets,” complains Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N.’s independent expert on human rights obligations relating to water and sanitation.

Jae So, manager of the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) at the World Bank told IPS the private sector is increasingly playing a part as service providers for the water and sanitation sector in developing countries.

What is needed is a strong policy framework in which the private sector can operate efficiently while providing customers with the services they require.

It is important to realise that “the private sector” includes a wide range of actors, and not simply the large international water firms who have been so visible in the privatisation debates of the nineties, many experts say.

In terms of addressing the basic sanitation of the 2.5 billion without access, it is far more likely to be the local mason and the local builder who will play the key roles. However, they still need support in gaining both technical and marketing skills, and an enabling environment that does not penalise them for “informality”, So added.

Peter Kolsky, senior water and sanitation specialist at the World Bank, told IPS the Bank works frequently with NGOs on the ground to implement both urban and rural sanitation and water projects, particularly when helping a utility or agency meet the needs of its poorest customers.

From Haiti to Maharashtra in India, the Bank works closely with NGOs and the small scale private sector to improve access to sanitation.

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play a major role along with all the partners in the sector, he explained. CSOs can act as a voice for the people to ensure their needs are factored into the sector planning process.

Kolsky said the Bank works with CSOs through a Community-Led Total Sanitation campaign.

“This is an activity that teaches villages about proper sanitation, one village at a time, and helps instill a sense of community pride when improved sanitation is achieved,” he said.

CSOs can also play a role similar to that of the news media, by monitoring the sector and governments’ responses and actions to improve it, he added.