A waterless society

The Philippines is an archipelagic state and abundant in water supply however, unfortunately, many provinces, municipalities and even cities do not have access to safe, drinking water albeit the Philippine government’s exhaustive effort to provide all its citizens with such. This predicament is echoed by the United Nations through a prepared paper issued recently by the World Health Organization (WHO) which links poor access to water to sanitary toilets which is also a growing concern among the people in the countryside. There is an obvious dearth in these two components which is blamed for lack of political will. Although I subscribed to the opinion of the United Nations on these two important landmark concerns however, I will add my own observation that although there are political will among Local Government Units, the thrusts of the national government does not always happen to be in consonance with it. Sometimes, even the national government, through the Department of Health does not have a structured approached towards the provision of safe, drinking water in many of our communities and villages. Our attitude will almost always be a reactive one especially when an outbreak looms. We never had a proactive approach towards resolving the crisis of water and the perennial problem of lack of sanitary toilets in ever household.

Looking at many households in the Philippines, sanitary toilets are blatantly absent, perhaps, due to the kind of practices and norms that we share with our community or high price of toilets that is keeping away our poor fellowmen from procuring one. Another is that mostly, in the barangays and hinterlands, communities are not aware of the impact of unsanitary practice as a result of no functioning toilets in the household. Human excreta find it way to the small esteros, rivers and down the seas. Many of our slums in the metropolis discourages provision of toilets due to its houses being made of light materials as well as the sheer floor area which they usually enjoy under the bridge, near a riverbank or worse, slums on the sea on stilt. These houses do not have provisions of toilets under the standards set by the UNICEF or the United Nations and this is causing us to harm our environment and the functionality of our ecosystem plus our food chain.

As claimed by the United Nations, untreated waste water and human excreta found its way to the food chain by sipping through the soil and this has being unnecessary nutrients to food like vegetables and fruits, and some even, resulting from garbage in open dumpsites, untreated waste water find its way to improvised deep wells which occasionally is the source of potable water in the community thus resulting to cholera and diarrhea outbreak, sickness brought about by pest like flies and cockroaches as well as many water-born diseases. This, I think has been clearly understood by many in the Local Government Units, however, the national government has not been solidly behind them in their efforts to improve the provision of potable drinking water as well as in the encouragement of the use of toilets in every household.

Since I was young and until now, the government has been so actively pursuing campaigns on frequent hand washing which is also a good avenue to avoid sickness however, our national government through the Department of Health has been unusually silent in the aspect of the provision of functioning toilets in the household. Much more, the DOH has been remiss of their duty in the common-sensical provision of potable drinking waters in all barangays, municipalities and provinces across the country. What is worse is that even the DOH does not have concrete data archives regarding the present status of toilets in the country and the number of households that have sufficient access to potable drinking water.

2008 is the recognized International Year of Sanitation, it is prudent for our Local Governments across the country to focus their attention on the provision of potable drinking water in the barangay as well as in the provision of functional toilets in every household, to be able to contribute to the realization of the Millennium Development Goals, not only for our posterity but also to our national survival. It is a matter of national survival primarily because inefficiencies in these aspect results to outbreaks that claimed innocent and productive lives of our fellowmen. We can build on a stronger community if everyone is healthy and is living in clean, habitable environment. It is our joint concern, collectively as a community, in partnership with the Local Government Units and in tandem with the thrust of the National Government and the vision of the United Nations through the World Health Organization.