From MASEMBE TAMBWE in
Kolkata
Sanitation engineers in
the Indian subcontinent are advocating for effective public – private partners
to generate demands for sanitation in the community and promotion of hygiene.
Speaking during the
opening of a national seminar on community development and river pollution
control in Kolkata, the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation
founder, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak said that the promotion shouldn’t be left to
central and local governments alone but NGOs and CBOs also had a role to play.
“A river is as clean and
as healthy as the inhabitants on its bank. Installing sewerage treatment plants
at the outfall will not give us the desired results for pollution control
unless the cities, towns, peri-urban and rural areas are clean and free from
waste dumps in its entirety,” he said.
Dr Pathak said that there
was a need for an effective combination of on site sanitation and waste water
disposal systems.
Sanitation engineers
agreed that there was an urgent need to address issues related to pollution of
water bodies not only in India but other countries as well taking into account
that 1,500 cubic kilometres of waste water are produced annually globally and
water as a resource is getting scarce with minimal cities being conducted to
the sewerage system.
According to IWA Water
Wiki website, sanitation provision in Dar es Salaam is grossly deficient, as in
most cities in sub-Saharan Africa where most people do not have access to a
hygienic toilet; large amounts of faecal waste are discharged to the
environment without adequate treatment.
The website cites that
according to 2003 World Bank statistics less than 10 percent of households have
a sewerage connection; about 20 percent (mostly in upper- and middle-income
groups) have septic tanks, while the remainder are dependent on pit latrines.
“The sewerage system
comprises about 140 km of sewers connected to an ocean outfall or to one of
nine decentralized waste water stabilization ponds. As noted, only about 10
percent of households have a sewerage connection: as at 2003, the Dar es Salaam
Water and Sewerage Authority (DAWASA) had about 22,000 sewerage customers.
Dr Pathak said that in
developing countries like India, rivers and lakes were getting increasingly
polluted because most water waste treatment plants were ill functioning and
also due to untreated domestic sewerage loads from the urban habitats.
“The septic tank is also
expensive and unaffordable for the majority of the population and they also
require large volumes of water for flushing. There is a shortage of drinking
water in almost all urban areas and hence water conservation is a critical
issue,” he explained.
He proposed that an
alternative model of management that he designed could be used which is a
combination of on site excreta disposal system and decentralised flush compost
toilet by using bio-gas plants and effluent treatment systems.
The West Bengal Urban
Development Principal Secretary, Mr Debashis Sen said that whilst he agrees that
there was a problem in the pollution of rivers in India, he advocated for a
holistic approach where the interests of the communities benefiting should be
taken into account.
Citing the Ganges Action
Plan for the Ganges River where a programme is underway to clean it and has a
target of attaining zero discharge by 2020, Mr Sen said that many people had
misgivings on the programme saying that the objectives were taking too long to
be met.
He said that a similar
river in Singapore which was heavily polluted took 20 years to get clean and it
was only possible because near dictatorship decisions were taken to resettle
the people, and that such stern decisions may be difficult in India because of
the level of democracy.
“The only way a solution
will be found is by taking the community into confidence such that a multiple
dimension is taking into finding a solution to doing away with waste water
pollution,” he said.
Mr Sen said that whilst
there were vast amounts of technological solutions, it was important that these
solutions involved the community who are dependent on the river either through
their livelihood or religious rituals.
The organising secretary
of the seminar, Eng Tarun Dutta said that there were no policies that were
static and rigid and couldn’t be taken for granted for life calling on decision
makers to sit and make introspection on the basis of documented achievements
and failures.
Eng Dutta said that
seminar was aimed at creating a platform for brainstorming exercises to carry
out purposeful prognosis involving professional organisations, institutes,
academicians and other experts.
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