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.
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).
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