Accelerate implementation of measures to ensure sustainable sanitation

ZIMBABWE Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) joins the rest of the world in commemorating United Nations (UN) World Toilet Day and implores local and central government to accelerate implementation of measures to ensure sustainable sanitation and that everyone has access to a clean and safe toilet by 2030.

The aspiration to have safe toilets and achieve sanitation for all is contained in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which is pivotal in helping to break taboos around toilets and making sanitation for all a global development priority.

Through a resolution which was adopted in July 2013 declaring World Toilet Day, the UN seeks to encourage member States and other stakeholders to encourage behavioural change and the implementation of policies to increase access to sanitation among people, along with a call to end the practice of openair defecation, which is harmful to public health.

Commemorated under the theme Sustainable Sanitation and Climate Change, World Toilet Day reminds us that sustainable sanitation, clean water and hand washing facilities help in protecting and maintaining our health and stop the spread of deadly infectious diseases and viruses such as coronavirus and other waterborne diseases.

This year’s theme for World Toilet Day implores us to focus on sustainable sanitation and climate change and with the new threat posed to sanitation by climate change, everyone must commit to the provision of toilets that effectively capture human waste in a safe, accessible and dignified setting.

In Zimbabwe, recent revelations contained in a report entitled Management of Sewage Systems by the Urban Local Authorities under the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing published by the Auditor-General’s Office are unsettling. The forthright report revealed that the majority of people living in Zimbabwe’s main urban suburbs were prone to drinking sewage-contaminated water due to poor sanitation management systems provided by local authorities.

ZLHR is worried because of the perennial failure of local authorities and central government to manage sanitation systems in the country and to allocate adequate financial resources, which sadly has led to unnecessary loss of lives due to the outbreak of waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea, which are preventable diseases that can be eradicated when sanitation is properly managed.