Water construction and sanitation require government planning and public participation, environment office director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Indonesia, Alfred Nakatsuma, said here on Monday.
He said Indonesia was still facing sanitation problems because around 70 percent of its population defecated anywhere they felt like thereby spreading the risk of diarrhea.
“Indonesia is one of many countries that still has a sanitation problem,” Alfred Nakatsuma said.
According to him, around one billion people around the world still defecate in the open air and 81 percent of them lived in India, Indonesia, China, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, Nepal, Brazil, Niger, and Bangladesh.
“Therefore, water construction and sanitation require government planning and public support. In addition, the people have to be able to make changes for themselves and their environment,” he said.
He said 94 percent of diarrhea epidemics was caused by bad sanitation and consumption of unhealthy water.
According to him, USAID had announced a new activity called the USAID Indonesia Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (USAID IUWASH) Project to build on over 10 years of collaborative assistance with the government of Indonesia in safe water and sanitation.
IUWASH is a five-year, US$33.7 million effort that will expand access to water and sanitation services to Indonesia’s urban poor who are currently the people with the most limited access to these services.
Meanwhile, Public Housing Ministry’s bureau chief of planning and budgeting, Oswar Mungkasa, said diarrhea could occur when the stomach was infected by microbes from feces.
“Besides diarrhea, other diseases such as typhoid fever, hepatitis-A, and polio, are still haunting people with unhealthy habits,” Mungkasa said.
Therefore, he said, sanitation improvement programs should be on top of both government and the public’s priorities.
