Drinking Water and Sanitation Conditions of Households in Tea Estates: A Case Study from the Giragama Estate

Abstract

Safe drinking water and adequate sanitation are considered as basic human rigths. The understanding of how many people do not have access to drinking water and sanitation may help to assess the communities who do not have access to the fundamentals needs and facing spread of communicable diseases. In Sri Lanka, the estate sector has comparatively low health and sanitation condition than the rural and urban sectors. The population coverage for water and sanitation services for urban, rural and estate sectors are 100%, 82% and 62% and 100%, 82% and 55%, respectively in 2012. The Millanium Development Goals and National Development Plan targets 80%, 90% and 100% of water for estate, rural and urban areas, respectively. In the case of sanitation they target 75%, 85% and 95% for estate, rural and urban areas respectively. This study was conducted to investiage the drinking water and sanitation situation of househods in two villages of the Giragama tea estate in the Central Province of Sri Lanka. The required data were collected through a structured questioner from a randomly selected 26 households from Kudaoya and 35 households from Kirimetiya watta of the Giragama estate. The main source of drinking water is unprotected spring in Kirimettiya watta and piped water in Kudaoya. The percentage of improved source of drinking water is 77.2% and 94.9% in Kirimettiya watta and Kudaoya, respectively. A 51.4% and 34.6% of water collection is done by females in Kirimettiya watta and Kudaoya, respectively. A 96.8% of households in Kirimettiya watta have access to safer drinking water while it was 78.3% in Kudaoya. Boiling is found to be the major means of treatment of drinking water for 85.3% of the population tested. Kirimettiya watta has 87.3% improved sanitation facilities while it is 85.6% in Kudaoya. With respect to sanitation, 81.1% dispose children’s faeces safely in Kirimettiya watta and this was 100% in Kudaoya. According to the overall analysis, it can be concluded that the two villages considered in this study has a fairly good improved drinking water facility and water availability. The households in Kudaoya have less awareness with regard to making drinking water safer. More than 85% of the households are using improved sanitation facilities and most of them have improved methods of childen’s fecal removal.