NEW DELHI, Nov 19: Carrying forward the commitments made in the 2006 Islamabad Declaration on water and sanitation, the Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation (Sacosan) has opened in New Delhi.

At the opening ceremony, attended by civil society delegates, government officials and dignitaries, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed the significance of total sanitation in South Asia.

He cited a quotation of Mahathama Gandhi — ‘Sanitation is more important than independence’ — and said that sanitation was the right of every citizen. The theme of the Third Sacosan conference is ‘sanitation for all’ and ‘sanitation for dignity’.

Pakistan’s Minister for Environment Hameedullah Jan Afridi handed over the Sacosan chair to Indian Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.

Mr Afridi said the commitments made during the Sacosan II in Islamabad were being carried out in Pakistan to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of 2015 — “access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”.

With a new government in place and environment on the manifesto of the Pakistan People’s Party, one of the first tasks for the government is to make a viable sanitation policy in line with the needs of the people in rural and urban areas.

Though Pakistan has a better sanitation coverage (over 50 pc) than in India (about 30 per cent), the need is to increase the awareness of the concept of community-led sanitation in far-flung rural areas and urban informal housing settlements to ensure that requirements of the MDGs are met in time for 2015.