Cordi still lacks toilets
A LACK of toilets still plagues the highlands.
Department of Health (DOH)-CAR assistant regional director Amelita Pangilinan stressed most rural areas in the region still do not have sanitary toilets with only an 85 percent areas equipped with the facility.
Records show among the 338,817 households in the Cordillera Administrative Region there are still 54,000 households or 15% without sanitary toilets.
“The number one problem in Cordillera is lack of basic sanitation facilities and the worst is there is actual comfort rooms but without septic tanks, “she added.
Pangilinan said in
Kalinga studies show the lowest percentage at 65% while the city of Baguio presented the highest with 99 percent.
“We have the roadmap presented by 2022 is zero open defecation in all the 1,176 barangays of Cordillera will be Zero Open Defecation (ZOD)” adding the battle to sanitize and solve water prob- lems and to attain 100 percent toilet coverage through technical assistance to encourage municipalities.
DOH-CAR is enjoining municipalities to create their respective municipal ZOD verification and certification team.
The ZOD program seeks to attain a 100 percent of all barangays in the country including the region to be declared ZOD status by 2022 by doing so, official verification and certification of ZOD status of the barangays is needed.
Health workers will form a technical working group to visit barangays and verify sanitation levels and give the ZOD status through monitoring.
The status can be revoked when the areas do not sustain the standards set.
Pangilinan said the remote barangays have the biggest problem of not having sanitary toilet.
The strategy eyed by the agency is to provide septic tanks, “It’s either we will provide septic tanks, we will shift our assistance it would not be toilet bowls rather it would be septic tanks.”