Behind the beauty of Ternate city’s mountain and sea, there lies a big threat of environment pollution due to some community’s poor sanitation habits.
The STBM (community-based total sanitation) data on May 9, 2019, indicated that of 48,862 households in Ternate city, 81.9% use permanent healthy latrine—individual latrine with septic tank. The remaining 5.3% use semi-permanent healthy latrine—latrine with unsealed fecal containment, 8.8% use shared toilets, and 4% practice open defecation.
The community who has yet to have healthy permanent latrines usually dispose their domestic wastewater directly to environment so that it could contaminate groundwater and environment.
Ternate city government has encouraged the community to switch to latrine with septic tank.
However, some community lack affordability to build such facilities at their own cost. Moreover, the city government has limited budget to build latrines with septic tank for the low income community members.
“The government’s annual sanitation budget is limited. Therefore, supports from multi-stakeholder is essential to accelerate sanitation access improvement, particularly for the low income community members,” said Aida Fitria, a staff of Ternate City Health Office.
To address this issue, Ternate City Health Office—with supports from USAID IUWASH PLUS—establishes a cooperation with many private firms and organization, among others is Badan Amil Zakat Nasional (BAZNAS) of Ternate city.
From January to April 2019, the health office and USAID IUWASH PLUS held discussions with BAZNAS of Ternate city to prepare their partnership. As a result, BAZNAS of Ternate city government agrees to use the Zakat (a religious obligation tax in Islam) distributed through BAZNAS to build latrines with septic tanks for low income community members.
On April 29, 2019, BAZNAS and health office of Ternate city signed the cooperation agreement. This year, BAZNAS of Ternate city provides budget of Rp50 to Rp70 million to build five to seven latrines with septic tank for low income community members. The supports from BAZNAS is expected to increase in the future.
Aida Fitria also explained that the health office and BAZNAS of Ternate city, with supports from USAID IUWASH PLUS, will start working with the community to conduct participatory assessment and triggering to agree on the potential beneficiaries as well as to promote behavior and knowledge on the operating and maintaining the facilities built together.
-Johanis Valentino (contributor)-
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