Women and girls across the world collectively spend about
200 million hours daily collecting water which is a "colossal waste"
of their valuable time, the UN children's agency has said of the activity which
is a daily routine for millions of girls in India.
As World Water week kicked off earlier this week, the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) highlighted the opportunity cost from a lack
of access to water disproportionately falls on women and girls who collectively
spend as much as 200 million hours - or more than 22,800 years - every day
collecting this vital resource.
"Just imagine: 200 million hours is 8.3 million days,
or over 22,800 years," UNICEF's global head of water, sanitation and
hygiene Sanjay Wijesekera said.
"It would be as if a woman started with her empty
bucket in the Stone Age and didn't arrive home with water until 2016. Think how
much the world has advanced in that time. Think how much women could have
achieved in that time," he said.
"When water is not on premises and needs to be
collected, it's our women and girls who are mostly paying with their time and
lost opportunities," he added.
The UN's Sustainable Development Goal for water and sanitation calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable
drinking water by 2030.
UNICEF said in this regard, the first step is providing
everyone with a basic service within a 30-minute round trip, and the long term
goal is to ensure everyone has safe water available at home.
However, UN estimates are that in sub-Saharan Africa for 29
per cent of the population, improved drinking water sources are 30 minutes or
more away.
In Asia, the numbers are 21 minutes in rural areas and 19
minutes in urban areas.
UNICEF added that when water is not piped to the home, the
burden of fetching it falls disproportionately on women and children,
especially girls.
A study of 24 sub-Saharan countries found that when the
collection time is more than 30 minutes, an estimated 3.36 million children and
13.54 million adult females were responsible for water collection.
In Malawi, the UN estimates that women who collected water
spent 54 minutes on average, while men spent only 6 minutes.
The UN agency noted that for women, the opportunity costs of
collecting water are high, with far reaching effects.
"It considerably shortens the time they have available
to spend with their families, on child care, other household
tasks, or even in leisure activities. For both boys and girls, water collection
can take time away from their education and sometimes even prevent their
attending school altogether," UNICEF said.
When water is not available at home, even if it is collected
from a safe source, the fact that it has to be transported and stored increases
the risk that it is faecally contaminated by the time it is drunk, it said.
This in turn increases the risk of diarrhoeal disease, which
is the fourth leading cause of death among children under five and a leading
cause of chronic malnutrition, or stunting, which affects 159 million children
worldwide.
More than 300,000 children under 5 die annually from
diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene, or unsafe drinking
water - over 800 per day.
"No matter where you look, access to clean drinking
water makes a difference in the lives of people," said Wijesekera.
"The needs are clear; the goals are clear.
SOURCE BUSINESS STANDARD
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