Taking Sanitation Seriously

In March, The Ministry of City Planning & Water Supply together with Harpic launched The ‘HarpicSuwa Jana Meheyuma; Mission Wellbeing’, in collaboration with the Ministry to support elevate the status of hygiene across these identified households in Sri Lanka. The projectaims to build 100 toilets in the Western province in the first phase and was ceremoniously launched at the David De Silva Vidyalaya in Peellawatta, Katunayake. The national school has an 800-strong student population and is one of two schools that will be included in the first phase. At the completion of the project, up to 300 toilets will be built at homes and schools across Sri Lanka.

The lack of toilets is only the tip of a broader national issue that needs urgent attention, before the damage becomes irrecoverable.

The Harpicteam has actively promoted cleanliness and hygiene since the inception of the brand. Ten years ago,the brand embarked on a ground activation, visiting about 250,000 home annually across Sri Lanka to educate the residence about maintaining a hygienic toilet. While the main aim was to educate households about keeping their toilets clean, the team began recording their observations that has today lead the brand to take a in depth look at sanitation in Sri Lanka.

First Step

The first step in our planned long terms approach was installing washrooms at public events such as festivals. The team developed a modern, containerized unit with multiple latrines and handwashing facilities. The unit can be easily transported by road and is maintained by a dedicated staff after every use to ensure clean and hygienic conditions every time anyone uses the facilities. The team has received an overwhelming response to the initiative and responding to calls to increase the number of containerized units, a second has been added and that will be used across all major festivals in Sri Lanka. The team has also received numerous requests from private event organisers to install the containerised units at the event venues to ease the congestion and sometimes unhygienic conditions of the toilets at such venues. This reaffirms the viability of our approach in addressing the need for public toilets.

Residential Reach

When the Harpic team first started visiting homes over a decade ago, their main goal was creating awareness for proper sanitation and the brand. However, as the project progressed, the team uncovered more information from the Harpic activation teams and realized there was a bigger issue to be addressed.

The quality of toilets was the most obvious. While the toilets in many households have been renovated or rebuilt, many remain in very basic and damp conditions. A significant number of toilets also continue to be located outside the house with no plumbing. The team also found a number of homes with no toilets at all. Itis estimated that nearly two percent of the population practice open defecation due to the lack of toilets, while a further two percent share a common toilet. The Ministry of City Planning and Water Supply has identified the need for nearly 180,000 toilets across Sri Lanka.

Harpic’s current efforts of building toilets is only the first step of a much bigger national project that hopes to address Sri Lanka’s sanitation issues that go deeper than the unclean toilet we see on the surface.

Digging deeper

While Harpic ground activation team address the issue on the surface, they are also reviewed the situation below ground. An observation made by the teams visiting homes over the past decade was the investment each household put into building the toilet itself. Most often, the team found that toilets that were built outside the homes had poor pit constructions or no build structure at all. The makeshift toilet sheds, found in some homes, which use repurposed material sometimes lacked a pit all together, with the effluents flowing into a nearby stream, field or marsh.

At a grassroot level, we are now advocating access to decent sanitation as a priority. The Harpic team is now hopeful that before long, more institutions will come together and partner with the government to address this issue and the other underlying issues such as waste disposal and management and more stringent enforcement of laws governing the construction of these facilities.

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