19 November: World Toilet Day - 2016 Toilets and Jobs

World Toilet Day is held on 19 November each year to advocate for healthy sanitation. The theme for 2016 is ‘Toilets and Jobs’ to focus on how sanitation, or the lack of it, can impact people’s work and livelihoods. The message is that toilets save lives, increase productivity, create jobs, and increase economies.

Sanitation is a global development priority. The 2015-2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) include a target to ensure that everyone has access to toilets by 2030.

Toilets are important for good health. Globally 2.4 billion people around the world do not have a toilet in their home, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). About 10% of people without a toilet in their home have no choice but to go in their local environment near homes. This can transmit diseases. Diarrhoea caused by poor sanitation and unsafe water kills 315,000 children every year.

A lack of toilets at work and home contributes to poor health, work absenteeism, attrition, reduced concentration, exhaustion, and decreased productivity. Workplaces without toilets or poor hygiene and sanitation contribute to 17% of all workplace deaths, according to the International Labour Organization. Loss of productivity due to illnesses caused by poor sanitation costs developing countries up to 5% of GDP. About $260 billion is spent on healthcare due to poor sanitation. The Sustainable Development Goals also aim to reduce sick days by 322 million every year, representing an annual health sector saving of $7 billion.

In workplaces where toilets are present, often toilet breaks are restricted or controlled by management because they do not want production workers to be away from their work. If access to toilets is restricted, it is bad for workers’ health. People often avoid eating or drinking to minimise how many times they might need to visit the toilet. Investing in good clean toilets is shown to improve productivity at work because people will take fewer sick days, and they will be comfortable and healthy at work.

Management at workplaces should ask themselves whether there are enough toilets for staff, and are they working, clean and lockable. Is there running water and soap for people to wash their hands?

The global demand for water and sanitation services (Toilets and Jobs) is worth over $50 billion, so there are jobs in the sanitation business. For example, in the 2014 United Nations Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) showed that less than 20% of countries that participated in the study had sufficient capacity to meet rural sanitation needs, and even fewer countries had plans to redress the gaps. Making it easy for people to establish sanitation businesses, as part of countries’ economic plans, will help entrepreneurs to flourish and could accelerate the progress towards good health and less sick days. Particularly in the towns and cities of low-income countries, service providers could play a vital role in getting toilets to needed locations, said WaterAid in 2016.

In the European Union there were more than 2.5 million jobs in the wastewater and solid waste management sectors, according to Ernst and Young in 2006. The International Water Association assessed the capacity gap in 2014 for trained and qualified water and sanitation professionals to achieve universal sanitation access across 15 countries, and found that there was a demand for over 750,000 people to be trained.

The United Nations and the World Health Organization also wants to remove the negative connotations of sanitation jobs. Sanitation jobs are vital in keeping people healthy. Hence they are important jobs in every society.

http://www.un.org/en/events/toiletday/

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).