LAHORE, April 24: A draft on provincial sanitation strategy is ready for approval by the cabinet and the Punjab Assembly.

Provincial special secretary for housing, urban development and public health engineering department Shabbir Ahmed stated this while giving a presentation on the strategy at the concluding day of the Punjab Development Forum here on Tuesday.

He said the draft aimed at facilitating voluntary public participation in execution and management of water supply and sanitation services through tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) and union councils (UCs). The government would act as a facilitator and offer rewards for outstanding performance.

He said donors, NGOS and citizens had arranged significant resources for improvement of sanitation infrastructure in the province but the sanitary conditions were not commensurate with the quantum of resources deployed.

He said latrine usage in Punjab was the lowest in the four provinces and there was 68 per cent open defecation in rural areas. Not a single person in the province was safe from the risk posed by unsafe disposal of excreta as untreated sewage was flowing into rivers and streams and polluting underground water.

Solid waste was not disposed of in a sanitary manner due to absence of any law and was predominantly managed by the private sector.

He said the sanitation strategy aimed at making the open fields and drains defecation free. It aimed at changing the ages-old concept of disposal of excreta in cesspools by encouraging the use of toilets.

Open defecation free villages would be notified on the pattern of Bangladesh.