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Saturday, September 20, 2003
Editorial: Toilet talk
It is something Cebu City residents are aware of but their officials overlook, lost as they are in grand plans and, in the case of the present City Hall occupants, politicking.
Still, it is good that the Cebu Uniting for Sustainable Water (CUSW) and other groups are presenting the problem in a different package—using a more scientific approach and linking it to a bigger concern, the city’s water supply.
According to the result of a survey conducted by the Cebu City Health Statistics and Surveillance Office in December 1999 and which CUSW and other concerned groups used as reference material, 11 percent of the city’s households have no toilets.
Among those with toilets, 14.3 percent have no septic tanks while it is not known how many of the existing tanks are bottomless or are not bottom-cemented chambers.
In presenting the results of the survey, what the groups concerned with the city’s water supply are saying is that lack of toilet is a problem and needs more attention from the Cebu City Government.
Consider this point: Households alone drain 95,320 cubic meters of “bacteria and virus-loaded, chemically laden liquid directly or indirectly into its precious, diminishing groundwater daily.”
Unfortunately for CUSW and other concerned groups, there is no indication Cebu City officials will ever bother about “toilet talk” now and in the future. Note that even in the past, this matter occupies the lowest rung of City Hall’s priorities.
Even barangay officials, the people directly exposed to the problem, have not done much, judging from the way they spent the money given by the Cebu City Government for so-called self-help projects.
Perhaps the official indifference is rooted in the perception that constructing toilets should be the concern of individual households and not of government. Which is correct in a way but which won’t help in the effort to solve the problem.
Because lack of toilet is a problem that has already gone beyond the confines of the erring households, the Cebu City Government should pay attention to it.
Spotting the problem
At the southern tip of the south reclamation area, the problem is easily observable, that is if a government official bothers to stay out of his/her airconditioned car for a while.
The first attention-getter is the odor. One just has to stand on one side of the newly constructed South Coastal Road to note that what gets into the nose is not only the cool sea breeze but also the smell of fecal material.
Then observe the goings on of the people in the small fishing community nearby. From time to time, one sees somebody move towards the edge of the reclaimed area, look here and there and then squat.
There was a time when this particular spot of the South Reclamation Project (SRP) attracted people raring to go for a dip or just to savor the salty air. Not anymore. Even joggers hold their breath when they pass by the area.
Several months back, SRP officials fenced off the fishing village, but people always have a way of getting through a barricade. Meaning, it wasn’t the solution.
If officials can’t even solve the problem of lack of toilet in that small fishing village, how much more the lack of toilet in the entire city?
(September 19, 2003 issue)
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