Despite being declared open defecation free nearly nine years ago, over one thousand households in Salyan still lack toilets. On July 1, the then Salyan Drinking Water and Sanitation Office organized a large-scale event to announce the district as open defecation free. However, recent data reveals that more than 1,000 households have yet to build toilets, raising concerns about the declaration’s sustainability.
According to the 2021 census, Salyan has 54,701 households, of which 1,083 remain without toilets. Municipality-level statistics show that 126 households in Sharada Municipality, 225 in Bangad Kupinde Municipality, 28 in Bagchaur Municipality, 60 in Kapurkot Rural Municipality, 88 in Triveni, 226 in Kalimati, 87 each in Siddhakumakh and Kumakh, 81 in Chhatreshwari, and 75 in Darma Rural Municipality do not have toilets. Data also shows that 38,832 households in the district have toilets with septic tanks, the highest among toilet types. Additionally, 1,436 households use toilets connected to public sewer systems, 13,238 have basic toilets, and there are 83 public toilets available throughout the district. Many toilets constructed during the campaign were of poor quality, and dilapidated in a short time.
Durga Bahadur Rawat, a resident of Kalimati Rural Municipality-1, Lakshmipur, said the relevant authorities remained silent after the declaration, and without donor support, building toilets with significant expenses is difficult. He further informed that due to water scarcity, 20 families in his settlement are still forced to defecate in the forest. Rawat explained that the water they carry after walking a long distance is only sufficient for cooking and drinking. For bathing and washing clothes, they must go all the way to the river. No one even thinks about fetching water for the toilets. Most toilets are not only unusable but have become dilapidated. Since everyone’s financial condition is weak, no one has been able to build new ones. Whenever people need to relieve themselves, they run toward the nearby forest.
Ravilal Basnet, Ward Chairperson of Kalimati Rural Municipality-1, reported that 24 out of 800 households in the ward still lack toilets. He noted that many existing toilets remain unused due to water shortages and pointed out that a lack of health awareness has reduced local interest in constructing toilets. Basnet added that many toilets have turned into storage places for grass and firewood because they remain unusable. Anup Shrestha, Chief of Water Supply, Irrigation and Energy Development Office, Salyan stated that the increase in the number of households compared to previous years might explain why many homes still lack toilets. He added that officials plan to analyze the situation this year to understand the basis of the earlier open defecation free declaration and why many households lack toilets recently.
