COLOMBO – The South Asian countries have expressed grave concern over worsening sanitation conditions in the region and demanded increase budgetary allocation to tackle the issue by slashing the defence expenditure.
In this connection, the ministers from the SAARC countries, including Pakistan, on Wednesday adopted Colombo Declaration which says that the governments in the region would make legislate to make the right to sanitation a part of the respective countries’ constitutions.
The declaration was issued after the four-day Fourth South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) under the title ‘Sanitation Enhances Quality of Life’ in the Sri Lankan capital. SACOSAN is a biennial convention held on a rotational basis in each SAARC country. Ministers and senior officials from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan and the Maldives in the draft document acknowledged the lack of safe sanitation and drinking water a major crisis.
The representatives promised for time-bound action plans and to allocate resources for delivering on all previous SACOSAN commitments made in Dhaka, Islamabad and Delhi. The draft document suggests that related ministries like health and education should be included in the SACOSAN process. It also mentioned the next SACOSAN would be held in Nepal. State Minister for State and Frontier Region (SAFRON) Engineer Shoukatullah attended the ministerial meeting and signed the declaration.
Inaugurating the ministerial summit, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa underlined the need for political will of the respective countries to implement the commitments on sanitation and water, especially with regards to schools, poor section of people and the differently able people.
“It is the time to reduce the budget allocation for defence, war and terrorism, that’s what Sri Lanka did, as in 2005 the budget allocation for defence was five per cent that was reduced to three in 2010 and the funds were diverted for better schemes of water and sanitation,” said Rajapaksa. Lankan humanitarian initiatives had enabled the government, not just to end conflicts but to divert resources earlier spent on conflicts, now towards welfare and development, the president said.
The countries in the region sustain significant economic losses equal to at least 5.8 per cent of the total regional GDP due to poor sanitation. “Most shockingly, children and adults are still dying needlessly. Since the last SACOSAN, about 0.75 million of South Asia’s children have died of diarrhoea,” said Amarananda Abeygunasekara, Sri Lankan secretary in the Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage.
The ministerial summit chaired by Sri Lankan minister of water supply and sanitation Dinesh Gunawarden reviewed the draft declaration which would be made public on the concluding day on Thursday. Indian Union Minister for Rural Development Vilasrao Deshmukh said the total sanitation campaign of his country aimed at an open defecation free rural India by 2017.
The country reports presented on the second day focused common challenges that include giving sanitation and water coverage to the poor section of people in both rural and urban areas, ethnic minorities in the hills and fishing communities in the coastal belts.
