“Believe me it was really very difficult to walk through this area as defecation was openly practiced. Moreover, the household waste was dumped haphazardly. The situation was awful, “reminisces Surendra Maharjan, a member of local youth club of Harisiddhi VDC. He describes the initial attempts; the local youths tried their best in finding the solution to keep the area sanitized that is ultimately the resultant of inadequate toilets and human behaviour.
“Believe me it was really very difficult to walk through this area as defecation was openly practiced. Moreover, the household waste was dumped haphazardly. The situation was awful, “reminisces Surendra Maharjan, a member of local youth club of Harisiddhi VDC. He describes the initial attempts; the local youths tried their best in finding the solution to keep the area sanitized that is ultimately the resultant of inadequate toilets and human behaviour.
“It stroke to me when I first visited to this settlement in Harisiddhi and suggested an institutional toilet to be built,” shared Jeevan Kasula, field coordinator, WatSan programme with Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD). He added, “This is the best possible and feasible solution we could opt for the prevailing situation of VDC. The toilet coverage is not satisfactory in VDC and therefore, people don’t find alternative than defecating in open. The institutional toilet will encourage people not to defecate in open when they find toilets within their proximity”. When asked about why it is called institutional toilet and not public toilet, he highlighted the importance of local youth club in sustenance of the toilet and said, “Public toilets in the city are in dilapidated condition. We don’t want the similar scenario for the toilets we are constructing in Harisiddhi. So, we have engaged the community from the beginning making them responsible for the activity. The club being an institution with sole service motive will be in-charge of entire operation, maintenance and sustainability of these toilets. “
These institutional toilets are in construction phase. Almost 75 percent of the work has been completed. The club envisages establishing a fund for the sustainability of the institutional toilets. They have identified few ideas for the collection of the fund. “We have thought of collecting money from the households of the community but we need to further discuss and decide on this. Alternatively, we have thought of a mechanism to generate the revenue using urine collected from institutional toilet for gardening as learnt from the exposure visit to Darechowk and selling the flowers in the market”, opined Mr. Maharjan. The idea of using urine was instigated by CIUD and then, the community members along with the some other neighboring villagers of Lalitpur District visited Darechowk in April 2012 for the exposure about the application of urine in the agriculture and gardening. The community now willing to opt gardening in the periphery of institutional toilet understanding values of urine application and enterprising the flower to generate funds for the operation of the toilet.
Report by Shreeya Bajimaya