In the quake-ravaged areas of Azad Kashmir, 14 villages have already been granted open defecation-free status by the UNICEF and its partners in the project.

Situated in the vicinity of Muzaffarabad, Kot Serian village is also one of the villages declared open defecation-free, where all of 53 families have constructed latrines in their homes after the UNICEF and its partner, Society for Sustainable Development (SSD) had started the sensitization of school-children as part of its School-Led Total Sanitation project.

During a visit to Kot Serian, Sandra Bisin, Communication Officer of UNICEF told media persons that approximately 2.3 million families are without latrines in Azad Jammu and Kashmir while only 20 to 30 percent of families had built it.

She said as result of the project, since the year 2005, nearly 1,900 latrines for girls and over 1,900 latrines for boys have been constructed at more than 1,700 temporary schools in AJK.

“Today, with the support of the UNICEF, 14 villages have been granted status of open-defecation-free in AJK,’ Sandra Bisin told media.

With the UNICEF support, nearly 2,000 teachers and 172,000 students, including over 79,000 girls and almost 93,000 boys, were trained on Schools Sanitation and Hygiene Education in AJK, she said adding, “Even the poor households have put up a makeshift toilet within their meager budget.”

Shamim Azam, SSD social mobiliser said under School-Led Total Sanitation project, teachers and social mobilisers sensitize the school students who persuade their parents to build latrine in their home.

“As a result of the sensitization of the school children, all the families have built latrines in their homes,” Shamim Azam said.

She said they had to face utmost difficulties while informing the people regarding the benefits of having latrines. They were not ready to give up their routine or made excuse of high cost, she added.

“We have told the people to build the pit latrines that incurs the cost of about Rs 500 and the flush latrine that costs more or less Rs 5,000,” Azam said.

Azam said before the project started, only five to six families had latrines in the village just because their family members were government employees and had awareness in this regard.

Shahnaz, who sensitizes the women’s group on sanitation in Kot Serian said people used to criticize the awareness campaign but she was pleased to say that their struggle proved successful.

“They have changed us. We feel relaxed and it has also brought remarkable change to our children who had mostly been suffering from diarrhea or other diseases due to open defecation,” she stated.

Mohammed Riaz, Coordinator SSD said, “at the moment, we have targeted school children, but in the second phase, we would also initiate Community-Led Total Sanitation project, under which the community would be sensitize on the sanitation issue”.