(Continued from Feb. 11, 2021)
THE Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) of the United Nations includes access to toilets as one of the indicators of being in a state of poverty. I have proposed FACETS as an acronym for all the six indicators, meaning Floor, Assets, Cooking Fuel, Electricity, Toilets and Safe Water.
The six indicators measure the living standards of people all over the world. It could be safe that the last two indicators should actually work with each other, because one could not work without the other. The other indicator that could work with these two is cooking fuel, because of the fact that sewerage systems and or septic tanks could be designed to produce biogas.
Under the indicator of floor, a household is considered poor if its floor is made of dirt (mud), sand or dung. Perhaps that is also so because without a clean floor, it would be difficult to maintain proper sanitation in a dwelling.
Even if this indicator does not specifically mention what the materials of the actual house should be, it is clear that the floor should not be made of dirt (mud), sand or dung. It also does not specify what kind of toilet it should have, as long as there is one. Obviously, it should have running water. That being the case, it would appear that having communal toilets would already be compliant, because the reference is about access to, and not ownership of toilets.
Obviously synonymous to good sanitation is the existence of a good garbage collection system. For so many years, many environment activists have been promoting good segregation practices, but sadly to no avail.
Unfortunately, the problem of local government corruption affects this goal, because many local mayors are making money from the hauling and dumping of garbage into the landfills or dumpsites. This racket is very easy to explain, because the more trips of trucks there are, the more money the corrupt mayors could make.
There is actually a conflict of interest here, because the more garbage there is hauled and dumped, it’s good for the bad mayors because the more segregation will happen, the less garbage there will be.
As it is supposed to be, there is supposed to be a law that requires all municipalities (towns and cities) to have at least one Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). Again, this is affected by the conflict of interest, because the more trucks that will go to the MRF, the lesser trucks that will go to the landfills or dumpsites.
By the way, dumpsites are supposed to be banned already, but many municipalities have not put up their own landfills. Even if they do have landfills, very few of these are fully compliant with international standards hence there is a lot of seepage into the aquifer, thus affecting the quality and safety of ground water./PN
