ZIMBABWE, which has over 1,6 million people that relieve themselves in the bush because of lack of toilet facilities last week joined the rest of the world in commemorating World Toilet Day under the theme ‘Dignity and Equality’.
Established in 2001, the day was deliberately designed to raise awareness and the importance of toilets.
Beginning last year, the United Nations (UN) officially recognised November 19 as World Toilet Day in a bid to make ‘sanitation for all’ a global development priority.
The UN deemed the practice of open-air defecation as ‘extremely harmful’ to public health.
Statistics show that about 2,5 billion people in the world have no access to proper sanitation.
In Zimbabwe, there is 24 percent coverage of toilets, but the country is working towards achieving Millennium Development Goal number Seven which largely targets to halve the proportion of the world population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, including toilet facilities, by 2015.
Water and sanitation are some of the key goals of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-ASSET), a five-year economic blueprint that Government is working to achieve.
In tandem with Zim-ASSET’s expectations, Government is undertaking many projects to address urban water supply and sanitation infrastructure, construction of rural water supply, sanitation schemes, construction of dams and other conveyance systems.
Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister, Dr Ignatius Chombo recently said his ministry is urging councils to ensure proper accommodation for residents, which have the necessary toilet facilities.
“If you look at Zim-ASSET our goal is to at least improve the standard of living by constructing about 125 000 housing units in the country and this also goes to the construction of toilets because when you touch on ablution facilities, these have also to do with service delivery,” said Dr Chombo.
The bulk of Zimbabwe’s rural population has no access to toilets while 33 percent of urban households use flush toilets.
A 2012 Zimbabwe National Statistics (ZimStats) report reveals that Bulawayo has the largest proportion of households with the flush system type of toilets.
“About 33 percent of the households in the country mostly used flush toilets; the proportion of households which mostly used Blair toilets was about 22 percent while that which mostly used pit latrines was 13 percent,” reads part of the report.
“The largest proportion of households which mostly used flush toilets were in Bulawayo (93 percent) and Harare (85 percent).
“Mashonaland West is third with 25,4 percent in terms of using the flush system, followed by Midlands at 24 percent; Matabeleland South is at 15,8 percent; Masvingo 15,6 percent; Manicaland 15,3 percent and Mashonaland East 13,8 percent.
Mashonaland Central has the lowest number of flush toilets, at 10,5 percent while Matabeleland North – at 56,3 percent – has the highest number of households without toilets.
“The province largely relies on the bush system, posing serious sanitary threats to inhabitants.
“Masvingo follows with 43,1 percent of households having no toilets and Matabeleland South comes third at 36,6 percent.
“In the Midlands, 36,5 percent of households do not have toilets; Mashonaland West 27,6 percent; Mashonaland East 23,4 percent; Mashonaland Central 21,1 percent and Manicaland 20,1 percent.
“In Bulawayo Metropolitan Province, just 1,3 percent do not have any form of toilets while Harare is on 0,4 percent.”
Experts say the absence of toilets has negatively impacted on clean water supply in Zimbabwe compared with other communities because 75 percent of households in the country have access to safe water.
The UN says the provision of proper toilets could save the lives of more than 200 000 children in the world from various waterborne diseases.
Countries where open defecation (bush toilet) is most widely practised are the same that have the highest numbers of under-five child deaths, high levels of under-nutrition and poverty and large wealth disparities.