Pakistan: Community Led Total Sanitation did not create demand for “improved sanitation”

Updated - Tuesday 17 November 2009

The Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach has enabled more than 1,500 villages in Pakistan to achieve open defecation free (ODF) status and is expected to reach 15,000 villages by June 2011. This will mean that a third of the rural population of Pakistan would be covered.

A recent assessment of CLTS pilots in nine villages in the country revealed that CLTS had the potential to motivate communities to achieve ODF status. However, it did not create demand for “improved sanitation”. The surveyed communities were found using unimproved and unhygienic latrines without taking any substantial effort to upgrade or replace damaged latrines due to limited knowledge of different latrine options available at the household level.

The study was commissioned by a core group of senior officials from the key national ministries of Environment and Health, as well as Provincial Planning and Development Departments and international agencies, including the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).

Reacting to this WSP news item, Prof. Duncan Mara noted in his blog post that "the whole CLTS ‘process’ needs to be upgraded so as to ensure people get at least ‘improved’ sanitation. Actually what people need is ‘good’ sanitation and ‘improved’ does not necessarily mean ‘good’ (after all, ‘improved’ sanitation includes a “pit latrine with slab” and we’ve all seen hundreds of these that are far from satisfactory)."

Related news: Pakistan: changing behaviour to stop open defecation, Source South Asia, 23 Jan 2009

Related web site: Community Led Total Sanitation - Pakistan

Contact: WSP South Asia, wspsa@worldbank.org

Source: WSP Access, Oct 2009, Duncan Mara's blog, 27 Oct 2009