Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water, Sanitation Jan -Feb 2014 Vol.10 No1 | Page 11

NEWS in brief

Global Highlights

Padilla was reported missing on Saturday. “Plant operators
spent hours draining the tank and underground pipes before
they could find the body of the 48-year-old man,” WPTV
reported.
It remains unclear how Padilla fell, but a city spokesman
said it appears to have been an accident, the Daily News
reported.

appointing around 2 dozen additional staff including
two Joint Secretaries and 4 Directors to strengthen the
implementation and monitoring of the Swachh Bharat
Mission. An Expert Committee for innovative sanitation
technologies and a national telephone helpline for rural
water supply and sanitation are other new initiatives that will
support the Mission.

India launches national monitoring of toilet use

Treat your sanitation workers well
By Cor Dietvorst

By Cor Dietvorst
How does India’s new large-scale sanitation monitoring
effort compare with similar initiatives in Bangladesh and
Indonesia?

There are two contrasting stories this week on the treatment
of sanitation workers: in China a local restaurant treats 180
sanitation workers to a free lunch, while in Gaza sanitation
workers who have received no pay for six months go on
strike.
More than 180 sanitation workers in Chengdu, Sichuan
province enjoyed a free lunch courtesy of a local hotpot
restaurant. Photo: weibo.com

Image: Government of India (GoI)

According to some media the Indian government has
unleashed “toilet police” or “toilet gestapo” into the
country. In fact, the central government has instructed local
officials to take photographs of new toilets to prove that
they have not only been constructed but are also being used.
If states don’t upload photos by February 2015, the water
and sanitation ministry has threatened to withhold funding
from a new national sanitation programme.
Open defecation free by 2019
Prime
Minister
Narendra Modi
launched
the
Swachh
Bharat
(Clean
India)
Mission on 2
October
2014.
His aim is to attain
Photo: Swachh Bharat Mission a 100 per cent
open defecation
free India by 2019. Since the launch over half a million
household toilets have been constructed.
By implementing “real time monitoring” the government
hopes it can correct past mistakes caused by ineffective
monitoring and wasted investment in sanitation. The
2011 census revealed that 43% of government funded
toilets were either “missing” or non-functional. Now the
government wants to show that its investments in sanitation
are delivering lasting results.

Sanitation workers in China get low pay, have poor working
conditions and work long hours. Mr. Li, a restaurant owner
in Chengdu, decided it was time to show some appreciation
for their hard work, especially now as temperatures were
dropping. He offered over 180 local sanitation workers a
free lunch; they were “encouraged to order whatever they
wanted, including alcohol”, writes Dina Li in the Shanghaiist.
The free lunch was also a compensation for the mess created
when Mr Li opened his new restaurant.
Employees promoted the place by distributing more than 100,000
leaflets that were, of course, thrown and scattered on the streets for
sanitation worke