Amin Aslam addressed meeting on sanitation
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Prime Minister’s Advisor on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam has said that we are devising a comprehensive national sanitation policy to materialize the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vision of Clean Pakistan.
While chairing a meeting on the sanitation subject at the Ministry of Climate Change in Islamabad on Friday, the advisor said that the national sanitation policy will entail creation of Open Defecation Free (ODF) environment, building of toilets on community help basis, the provision of ODF appropriate drainage and sewerage system especially to the villages through local governments in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) commitment.
National sanitation policy to entail creation of ODF environment
The advisor said that the provision of clean environment will be only possible when we will have a strong legislation, system of “rewards and punishments” in place and we will also include this aspect in our policy recommendations.
“Community based collective behavior change will be our preferred approach. Our focus would be on the creation of complete ODF villages, rather than only on the construction of individual toilets. This entails triggering the entire village into changing their behavior”, he said.
Amin Aslam stressed that aquifer gets contaminated when we don’t have proper sewerage and drainage system installed, creating severe sanitation and health issues for the people.
The advisor further said that about 8 percent of the world’s 165 million stunted children live in just 14 Countries including Pakistan. He said that we have to discourage open defecation which leads to diarrhea and stunting, and recent studies shown alarming figures in this regard.
The Federal Secretary Ministry of Climate Change Khizar Hayat Khan, Additional Secretary Captain (retd) Khurram Ali Agha, Dr. Saima (UNECEF), Country Coordinator (WSSCC) Tanya Khan and other senior officials from the Ministry were also present in the meeting.
The additional secretary appraised the meeting regarding salient features of the proposed sanitation policy through a detailed presentation and briefed about up scaling of “Pakistan Approached to Total Sanitation” (PATS).
