Residents welcome new toilets

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 07/06/2009 1:55 PM  |  City

Residents of Kalibaru in North Jakarta's district Cilincing welcomed eight new sanitation facilities with smiles and cheerful comments.

"We were previously in desperate need of healthy public lavatories," said Dartam, head of a community unit in Kalibaru, on the northern coastal area of the capital.

He said the absence of proper public toilets had been a problem for more than a decade in the area.

Most residents from two community units do not have home lavatories. So when nature calls, they answered it in 2-square-meter roofless compartments on the seashores.

"Those toilets were uncomfortable and unhealthy," he said, adding nearly 500 buildings did not have their own toilets.

The properly functioning toilets are now available for more than 2,000 residents. They are equipped with septic tanks.

The construction of the public lavatories was organized by Hope Worldwide Indonesia with financial support from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

The NGO also conducted similar projects in the slum areas of Pedongkelan, East Jakarta and Cijayanti, Bogor.

Their projects support the Community Lead Total Sanitation (CLTS) program launched by the Health Ministry.

The toilet-building project is a follow-up program to their free educational courses for Kalibaru's slum residents, who live on less than two dollars a day.

The educational courses have been given free of charge to kindergarten and primary school students for around two years by Hope volunteers, who are mostly senior high school students and experienced teachers.

The tutorials, which are called Saturday Academy, are held every Saturday between 12:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Most residents cannot afford to pay the fees for preschool education, which is now the prerequisite for admission to many primary schools in the city, as candidates should be able to read and write before being admitted.

"The informal program enables less fortunate kids to gain proper basic education," said Siti Susana, Hope's program manager of community development.

Nuryanti, Hope's voluntary tutor, said her students managed to put up with formal education at primary schools after earning some informal pre-school education.

"They can read and write as well as other students."

Susana said the newly constructed lavatories would smooth the course activities.

Before the construction, tutors could not find any appropriate toilets, which upset them.

But with the new toilets, the tutors can work more comfortably. The students were also happy with the new clean toilets.

"I will use them more often than the toilet at home," said Nishar Dwi Aulia, a sixth grader at a local primary school.

Indonesia's sanitation sector is the worst in Asia.

In 2006, around 30 percent of 60,000 villages in the country still used poor sanitation systems because, with many people having to defecate in rivers and gutters. (nia)

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