Peeping Tom…DYING IN VAIN

Sep 04, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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In hinterland schools where there is no electricity and no potable water supply from a central source, a pit latrine is often an inescapable choice.  Since there is no water to flush and no electricity to use a pump to bring water to a reservoir to use to flush the toilets, there can hardly be any use for flush toilets, as they are known on the coast.
You can have a bowl to do your number one and number two in but if there is no water to flush it down, then there is no way the bowl will be of any use. If the school in question has no electricity, which is the case in the remote villages, then there is no way to pump water up to a tank which can be used to flush the toilets.
The only logical choice in such situations, as is quite common in the interior, is for there to be pit latrines. This is what many persons in hinterland communities are accustomed to and therefore there are many schools that use pit latrines.
That being said, it is important that in this modern age that pit latrines are safe and hygienic. There are advanced ways of designing these latrines so that they are safe, free from stench and very comfortable. There is no way in this modern age that in any public school in Guyana, a child should fall through the seat of a pit latrine and die in the stench. This is unacceptable in today’s world and serious questions need to be asked as to how a child could have fallen through a pit latrine.
I have known pit latrines throughout my life. I have long, however, graduated from such things. I remember someone sitting on the seat of a pit latrine and falling foot first into the filth. It was not a pleasant sight. The person emerged knee high in filth.
The problem there was not design. It was the strength of the latrine. It was falling apart, it was not strong. My friend should have squatted over the seat rather than sat on it and because he placed his full weight on the seat which consisted of a few planks of wood, it gave way and he went foot first into the pile of human excrement and piss that lay below.
He came out dirty and stink, nothing that disinfectant, liberal use of water and a change of clothes could not rectify. Unfortunately, in the case of the child who perished in a pit latrine at the Santa Rosa Primary School, there is no way of bringing her back. This is unfortunate and I hope that the Ministry of Education along with the Ministry of Local Government will jointly commission an investigation into this incident.
The ruling PPP administration likes to boast about accountability. Yet when it comes to the essence of accountability they fall far short of the required grade. The main reason for this is the perennial fear within ruling circles of having inquiries to determine what went wrong, what could have been done better and what needs to be improved upon.
In this instance it is not a case of someone becoming dirty by falling into the pit. This is a tragic case. This incident at Santa Rosa has resulted in the loss of life of a young child and therefore it is necessary that an investigation be carried out that will answer some critical questions.
The first of these is the level of safety of the pit latrine. The second has to be whether the child, given her condition, should not have had a supervised visit to the said latrine. The third thing is about what needs to be done to make these pit latrines safe for children. These are some of the questions that in the normal response to such an incident we would expect.
We need to learn from these incidents, otherwise all these unfortunate deaths would have been in vain. We need to ensure that something like this does not happen again. It is a terrible, terrible way for anyone, much less a child, to die, and of at all places, her school.
A damper has been placed on the entire Amerindian Heritage Month celebrations because of this and another tragic incident in which three children perished after the dormitory in which they were residing caught afire. The blaze was believed to have been caused by a candle. Here again there will be questions as to why candles had to be used.
There should be no shame in admitting that there may not have been an electricity supply. But we need to now appreciate how costly the use of candles by children can be. We need to also determine whether we can afford in these hinterland communities (where there is a need to have boarding schools because of the distance from which the children have to travel), to have some sort of solar panels to provide electricity at nights so as to avoid the sort of accident which has resulted in three children being dead at Waramadong.
I hope that the government gets over its aversion and fear of investigation. I hope they see the value in such investigations as going beyond the assigning of blame. I hope in both of these incidents there will be investigations, so that the deaths of these four children will not be in vain.

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