Pragya Akhilesh - The pandemic has exposed India’s dirty truth: a broken sanitation system

By Dilip -

Newly-built “dry latrines” and “hanging toilets” in rural India are the result of the lockdowns of 2020-21 despite the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, and a strict ban. Sanitary toilet usage has declined because of the COVID-19 scare as, currently, more than six lakh toilets in rural India have acute water shortage. Around 1,20,000 toilets have no water supply and thousands of toilets are completely abandoned, with collapsing roofs, water pipes in poor shape and soggy, broken doors.

This is primarily the reason for the construction of illegal toilets, as sanitary toilets have become hotbeds of disease. The usage of both dry latrines and hanging toilets puts the communities around them at high risk of illness, beyond COVID-19. Therefore, both the construction and usage of these units need to be eradicated.

In rural India, long power cuts with no water coverage amidst the pandemic have again put the burden of maintaining sanitary toilets on sanitation workers. This is because thousands are displaced again, struggling for a meal a day. As “dry latrines” have been the biggest curse for India’s sanitation workers, these new “dry latrines” will be a fresh weight that they will no longer be able to carry. As toilet usage becomes a problem, another trend is the four-fold increase in open defecation in rural India. These defecation sites are also close to garbage dumps and local water bodies. These dumps contain a large number of used masks, PPE kits and effluents. The pandemic has also forced India’s sanitation workers to discard plastic bags filled with excrement and infected COVID-19 gear found on the periphery of community toilets even in the remotest areas. It is as if people are defecating anywhere except inside the toilets….

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-pandemic-has-exposed-indias-dirty-truth-a-broken-sanitation-system-7292937/

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