There is a standoff emerging in this political tennis match
between the government and the NGO community that is manifesting itself in the
local media. Every day there seems to an
article in the newspapers on the state of toilets (or lack of them) in the camps
in Vavunia.
Ever since the rush of people at the end of April, agencies
have been struggling to cope with the needs.
Coupled with the operational restrictions enforced by the
authorities, it has certainly been a
challenging environment to work in.
The current stand off is now around the question of
toilets. Who is responsible for building
them? And more importantly what is their
design?
As it stands at the moment, according to the government, it
is the UN and its humanitarian agency partners who are responsible for building
the toilets. Leave aside the issue that
many agencies are complaining about access restrictions, what is now becoming a
potentially divisive issue is the design and quality of the toilets.
For reasons that since the tsunami I myself am coming to
grips with understanding, most of the humanitarian agencies led by the UN have
this process by which they respond. That
is that they go through the initial response to a disaster by providing ‘temporary
shelters and toilets’. The next phase is
the ‘transitional shelters and toilets (often called the semi permanent
toilets) ’ and then you get to the ‘permanent shelter and toilets’. The argument is that temporary means that
those displaced will not be encouraged to stay in the place that they have been
displaced to. Rather there should be an
encouragement for them to return. There
are political connotations in the right to return, but the key element is that
displaced people should return to their places of origin. Anything that is built that is of a semi
permanent nature, in the eyes of the agencies, is tantamount to encouraging
people not to return.
In the eyes of critics, the flaw here is that agencies then
end up spending almost double for the same shelter. In the case of post tsunami reconstruction,
the cost of transitional shelters sometimes exceeded the repairs to the damaged
houses of the people.
The argument does fall a little bit flat when it comes to
toilets and sanitation. In displacements
such as this with the huge concentration of people, sanitation is often the
weakest link and people end up falling sick.
A vicious cycle is perpetuated.
Hence whatever the nature or the duration of the emergency, one issue
that is of utmost importance is the need to ensure basic human dignity with
regards sanitation.
The current standoff is now on the fact that the designs for
the temporary toilets are not really conducive to ensuring this basic
dignity. The government on the other
hand has been advocating for slightly better designed toilets taking into
consideration local cultural values.
However in the eyes of the UN, the nature of these designs are deemed to
be ‘transitional or semi permanent’ which might ‘encourage’ the current displaced
to remain and thus should not be followed through.
This is the confusion for me. Surely building a good toilet will ensure
less disease? At the end of the day I am
sure people given the choice will not stay because their toilet facilities were
better!!
These displaced deserve the best that they can get. This means that there should not be any
compromise on basic things like their toilets, even if they have to return
after 1 month.
The problem then arises that if you attend the cluster
meetings and rely on these agencies for funds, you are also compelled to follow
the same line which means temporary toilets are built which perhaps does not
adequately address the sheer need for proper sanitation.
Compounding the sanitation problem is that of the mounting garbage.
Waste management or lack of it is now a growing problem with the number
of flies increasing. As one of my
colleagues answered wryly as he returned from a visit there last week on how the situation is in the camps, ‘Flies!
Flies! Flies!’.
This is a worry. I
have already had three of my staff ill with fever and food poisoning after
being in the camps. The mounting garbage
problem is not sustainable and coupled with the lack of adequate sanitation
could make things worse than they already are.
The issues have become politicised. Most agencies are quietly saying that there
should not be anything done of a semi-permanent nature because this would be
feeding into the government’s agenda of not resettling the people and keeping
them in these camps. Arguments
apart, it is interesting to note that
many of these same agencies that are now protesting the need for these
displaced to return have not considered the many hundreds of thousands that
were also displaced over the last 20 years of this conflict, in particular, the
100,000 plus who were displaced to Puttalum living in refugee camps with basic
toilets and houses.
The key challenge now is for all stakeholders to work
together to ensure that the displaced get the best.
