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 ofhow many people do not have access to drinking water and sanitation may help to assess the communitieswho do not have access to the fundamentals needs and facing spread of communicable diseases. In SriLanka, the estate sector has comparatively low health and sanitation condition than the rural and urbansectors. The population coverage for water and sanitation services for urban, rural and estate sectors are100%, 82% and 62% and 100%, 82% and 55%, respectively in 2012. The Millanium Development Goals andNational 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 areasrespectively. This study was conducted to investiage the drinking water and sanitation situation of househodsin two villages of the Giragama tea estate in the Central Province of Sri Lanka. The required data werecollected through a structured questioner from a randomly selected 26 households from Kudaoya and 35households from Kirimetiya watta of the Giragama estate. The main source of drinking water is unprotectedspring in Kirimettiya watta and piped water in Kudaoya. The percentage of improved source of drinkingwater is 77.2% and 94.9% in Kirimettiya watta and Kudaoya, respectively. A 51.4% and 34.6% of watercollection is done by females in Kirimettiya watta and Kudaoya, respectively. A 96.8% of households inKirimettiya watta have access to safer drinking water while it was 78.3% in Kudaoya. Boiling is found to bethe major means of treatment of drinking water for 85.3% of the population tested. Kirimettiya watta has87.3% improved sanitation facilities while it is 85.6% in Kudaoya. With respect to sanitation, 81.1% disposechildren’s faeces safely in Kirimettiya watta and this was 100% in Kudaoya. According to the overallanalysis, it can be concluded that the two villages considered in this study has a fairly good improveddrinking water facility and water availability. The households in Kudaoya have less awareness with regardto making drinking water safer. More than 85% of the households are using improved sanitation facilitiesand most of them have improved methods of childen’s fecal removal.

KEYWORDS: Kirimettiya watta, Kudaoya, sanitation, drinking water