Mattancherry slums upgraded toilets.
Mattancherry is a beautiful suburbs of kochi, known for its tourist attractions and street foods. Mattancherry attracts a lot of foreigners all through the year. The suburb however for a long time have been faced with issue of not having good toilet facilities. We decided to walk the slums and find out the present day situation.
We first went to the bigban slum, a small slum constituting 15 families. Out of the 15 families 2 families had their own toilets, rest of the slum depends on 3 public cum private toilets as the toilet was used by the people of the slum for 99% of the time. The funding from the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, helped them construct the toilets which made slums cleaner and prevented the diseases. They understand how priceless having a toilet can be, they no longer have to open defecate, they no longer have to be victims of dangerous diseases. Not until we lose something, we never understand the true value of it, these slums dwellers have never had a toilet and they keep their toilets clean all the time. They didn’t have any complaints against the authorities, infact told us that the local governing body helped them construct the toilets.
Although the toilets installed made the life at slums easier, they are out of other facilities that they need for proper usage of toilets, they don’t have a steady water supply. Being able to receive water for only 2 times a day for 1 hour each, the water crisis makes it difficult for everyone in the slum to use the toilets judiciously. Another very critical issue that needs to be dealt with is septic tanks leakage problem. During, the rainy season, the slums get water logged and leakages in septic tanks allows waste to be mixed with water this leaves them with high risk of fatal diseases.
The condition of challaparmb changed dramatically in the last 3 year since launch of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Before last 3 years, the area didn’t have a well developed sanitation facilities and was prone to diseases. Packed with 8 families and few having their own toilets, this area overcame the sanitation problem and is keen on maintaining it themselves. The people were very happy with support and timely actions taken by the counselor.
Another place which showed significant progress is mksingh, this area recently got upgraded toilets. There was no pesticides being sprayed around these areas. The people were really thankful to the local governing bodies.
These are the people who were left unattended by authorities for many years, the slums area always portrayed as filthy areas can now boast about their clean toilets even though number of people who use it is high. These area set an example as to what happened when authorities turned a blind eye toward toilet facilities problem. With right guidance to people and right basic facilities, these areas transformed and the people there plan to keep it that way for years to come.
