Conference Paper: Dry Latrines in the Philippines: The Case of Tingloy

Year of publication: 2003

Background and Objectives

Tingloy is a small island in the province of Batangas, about four hours' drive from Manila. It has 3227 households in 15 barangays (lowest administrative units). Poblacion, the capital, has three barangays which classify as urban; the other 12 are rural. Almost 95% of the land is used for agriculture. Farmers still use traditional cultivation methods and apply commercial fertilizers along with organic matter. The island does not host any provincial government body and is highly dependent on the mainland. It has few NGOs and the private sector is limited to small restaurants, grocery shops and small workshops. There are several primary schools and one high school. The municipal health office has one doctor and two sanitary inspectors and coordinates 107 health workers. For anything else, people have to travel to the mainland by private boat service (three trips/morning), hire boats or use their own transport.

Water from wells (deep and shallow) and springs is available year-round. Barangay officials construct wells and develop springs under supervision of Rural Sanitary Inspectors (RSI). In Poblacion the Local Water Utilities Administration provides piped water through metered house connections. For sanitation, pour flush toilets with a ceramic bowl are common. The Provincial Health Office distributed 300 squat-type pour flush devices among low-income families; 20% of these were not put in place. Some 40% of the households do not have a toilet, mainly due to costs. Families in the hinterlands defecate in the forest, those in the built-up areas store their excreta in pans and buckets and empty them into the sea or use the wrap and throw method.

Up to the year 2001 the RSIs tested shallow wells and springs monthly on E-coli and bacteriological pollution. More than 50% of all shallow wells were polluted with E-coli. In the rainy season all had E-coli contamination. Deep wells were not polluted. If a well or spring was labelled positive, the RSI chlorinated the source with granules or educated the people on home disinfection using chlorine. Diarrhoea and cholera are nevertheless not prevalent, probably due to the chlorination and people's immunity to infections from their own bacteria. During heavy rains some cholera cases are found.

The objectives of the pilot project were to introduce the ecological sanitation approach in the area and to demonstrate that it can be an attractive alternative by installing three pilot EcoSan toilets in three households, one in each barangay of Poblacion.

The Center for Advanced Philippine studies (CAPS) approached and contracted PCWS-ITNF to implement the project within the ongoing Integrated Sustainable Waste Management programme. This programme is funded by WASTE, a Dutch NGO advising on urban environment and development issues. The project activities were community organizing, training, design development and improvement, construction, information and reference material development, assessment of water and sanitation situation, monitoring and extraction of lessons learned.

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