Deli Serdang district government aims to achieve safely managed sanitation for all.
Thus, since 2016, Deli Serdang health office and USAID IUWASH PLUS have supported Puskesmas Bandar Baru and the Penggerak PKK team in Sibolangit to intensively promote safely managed sanitation, including the construction of septic tanks that comply with SNI (Indonesian National Standard) to all communities in the Sibolangit sub-district.
Although such promotions have only recently started, a number of some community members have shown interest in building septic tanks. Among them is the community of Suka Maju village small village in Sibolangit sub-district in Deli Serdang district, North Sumatra.
Suka Maju village has about 700HHs, with most families in this area already aware of the importance of having toilets with septic tanks.
“We learn the importance of having a toilet and septic tank to protect our families from diseases, such as diarrhea and other bacterial/virus infection, from the district health office and Penggerak PKK team. They often visit Suka Maju village to promote safely managed sanitation,” said Malemta Tarigan, the staff of Deli Serdang District Health Office.
“However, building a septic tank is very expensive for most Suka Maju residents who mainly work as farmers (and they) cannot afford to pay it in one payment,” she added.
Therefore, the Suka Maju Head of Village encouraged the community to do an arisan (a community-based revolving fund) to pay for the septic tank construction cost.
In response to that, 13 households in Suka Maju village initiated an arisan in August 2019, in which each of them pay Rp90,000 per month. Every month, one household is selected to receive the arisan money amounting to Rp1,170,000 thousand to build a septic tank.
In September 2019, Aprin Bukit’s family was selected as the first arisan recipient. Soon afterwards, he used the money from the arisan to purchase materials for the septic tank and his neighbors supported the construction.
Aprin Bukit’s neighbors assisted the septic tank construction. During the construction of Apri Bukit’s septic tank, USAID IUWASH PLUS taught the community in Suka Maju village how to build the septic tank properly and safely, as well as how to maintain the facility so that it will still be functioning well over a long period of time.
In collaboration to that, the PKK team also used the moment to encourage other communities to build septic tanks, as one of the key steps to achieve safely managed sanitation.
Seeing the people enthused over the arisan, the Head of Suka Maju village is committed to encouraging more families to conduct the arisan. Arisan could be an alternative independent financial scheme that the community could use to build WASH facilities.
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