Leaders to hunt down residents without toilets

KALUNGU.

Authorities in Kalungu District have launched an operation to penalise residents without improved toilet and other basic family hygiene facilities.

According to Mr Shafick Ssekandi, the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) and Mr Emmanuel Musoke, the district chairperson, the move is aimed at enforcing the Public Health Act, 2000, which requires every homestead to have at least a pit-latrine.

The authorities said those without pit-latrines and those that will not comply with the Public Health Act would face the law.

“Our field visits have actually attested to the report findings. We are now going to arrest and charge all those family heads without substantive pit-latrines,” Mr Ssekandi said during an inspection exercise of some households at the weekend.

The two district officials are heading an operation to apprehend households with poor sanitation conditions.
Mr Ssekandi said although the council had issued a one-month ultimatum to have all residents construct standard pit-latrines, he could not wait for the grace period to elapse, arguing that sanitation cannot be compromised.

“Although the mandatory latrine depth is at least 15 feet, many just open two feet holes and use them as pit-latrines. Our survey revealed that many give excuses of having rocky landscape in some parts of the district,” he noted.

The crack down follows a recent study on the sanitary conditions in the district that revealed that majority of the residents in Kalungu District are living under deplorable hygienic conditions.

The health report
The report also indicates that the district toilet distribution currently is 49 per cent against the national average toilet coverage which is 68 per cent.
This means that almost seven homes out of every 10 lack toilets.