Kathmandu: A global campaign has been launched against poverty created due to lack of sanitation and drinking water in Nepal from today with an objective of pressurizing the government for enough budget in the periodic plans by giving sanitation a national importance and preparing a master plan with priority.

The campaign was started with the joint initiative of the organisations the WaterAid Nepal, NGO Forum for Urban Water and Sanitation and Lumanti Support Group for Shelter under the coordination of the Secretariat of the End Water Poverty Campaign at Kupondole of Lalitpur.
On the first day of the campaign, signatures were collected in 25 districts of the country today, said Executive Director of the NGO Forum, Prakash Amatya. The signatures were collected to pressurize the government for high level political commitment to extend the plans considered successful, toilet service to school students and policy formulation for town sanitation and separate budget for the sanitation promotion and making access to the programmes for the poor in programmes run by the state.
WaterAid Nepal representative Sanjaya Adhikari said that the campaign will act as a wake-up call to policy makers, donors and member civil societies for resolving problems by identifying the crisis created from poverty due to lack of sanitation and drinking water.
Some 54 per cent of people still do not have sanitation facilities according to studies and half of the total population has been deprived of toilets. Some 13,000 children under five years age die in Nepal untimely each year from various diseases because of lack of sanitation facilities. The government has taken as a national goal of making Nepal a fully clean nation by 2017. The United Nations has declared 2008 as the International Sanitation Year.

Source: The Rising Nepal, March 14, 2008