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Papua named province with worst sanitation in RI
Papua has been named as the province with the poorest sanitation in Indonesia after a recent survey scored it 45 on a scale of zero to 100, far lower than the national standard of 75, a local official has said
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apua has been named as the province with the poorest sanitation in Indonesia after a recent survey scored it 45 on a scale of zero to 100, far lower than the national standard of 75, a local official has said.
'I want to say frankly that the environmental sanitation program in Papua is the worst in Indonesia. I've just got a red flag report in Jakarta, in which the province's Clean and Healthy Living Behavior [PHBS] level is considered very low,' the Papua administration's Health Agency head Aloisyus Giayi said in Jayapura on Tuesday.
He said poor hygiene practices among Papua's residents had led the province to lag behind other countries in sanitation. This included not washing hands before eating or preparing food, open defecation and throwing away garbage anywhere.
Aloisyus said Papua's poor sanitation program was not the sole responsibility of the Health Agency but also agencies in other sectors, such as environment and public works.
According to official data, only 35 of 3,000 kampungs in Papua had participated in the Community-Based Total Sanitation (STBM) program. Meanwhile, only 46 percent of residents in the 35 kampungs have access to clean drinkable water and only 42 percent of them have access to hygienic toilets.
'Based on the Millennium Development Goals [MDG] 2015 targets, Indonesia has reached its MDG drinking water target of 68 percent and sanitation access of 70 percent,' Aloisyus said.
'Concerning the situation, we, in Papua, must catch up with the fact of having fallen behind. Synergy among sanitation players, as well as cooperation across sectors, must be pushed forward,' he went on. (ebf)(+++)
