Kohima police station’s latrine stirs up stink – literally

Citizens’ unable to take station’s digestive experiences EMN Dimapur, April 11 The Nagaland Voluntary Consumer’s Organization (NVCO) has noted the complaints of citizens in Kohima residing in and around the Kohima south police in the capital town about the station’s septic tank. The guilty septic tank seems to be ‘freshly flowing’ giving restless noses to nearby residents, the NVCO explains. Mercifully, the police is said to have quickly taken note of the matter when the NVCO met them, and proceeded to swiftly repair the faulty septic tank. The local consumers’ group is campaigning for the nationwide sanitation program, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, with the statement that it was not just ‘simply having a target to build one crore individual household toilets’ but inclusive of “well management of the existing ones and to keep every citizen’s surrounding clean.” “It is equally important to create awareness the importance of sanitation and making cleanliness a habit and a way of life,” the consumers’ organization stated in a press release issued to this effect on Saturday. “Sanitation is safely disposal of human excreta (feces and urine), keeping oneself, house and surrounding clean so that the conducive condition is created for good personal and community health,” the NVCO stated. According to the NVCO, ‘verbal complaints’ were received from the citizens residing nearby Kohima (S) Police Station. The citizens had been “complaining the disaster of Police Station‘s septic tank causing to them for the last one month or more,’ the NVCO stated in the note. President of the NVCO Kezhokhoto Savi is said to have ‘personally’ visited the police station and “found out that the human excreta were freshly flowing outside due to problem in the septic tank pipe.” The NVCO leader is said to have ‘preached’ the to the police personnel about sanitation which he said “includes the well management of public office toilets like police station asking them to manage their toilet like another normal toilet.” “Accordingly the concerned police station immediately replaced the septic tank pipe. There are similar problems in public places where the public toilets are being neglected may be due to scarcity of water or other reasons,” the NVCO stated. The organization attributed such problems to the absence of good sanitation in Kohima town. There is lack of proper toilet facilities and drainage systems; waste is disposed off along the streets which in turn create a foul smell and terrible living conditions for citizens, the organization reminded. Public are culpable too “Even the general public fails to do on their part such as when they see a newly constructed drain or even before completion they tend to throw all sorts of domestic waste thinking that drainage is waste bin. Not only that some people even built latrine and pigsty on top of the drainage and clogs the drains. During rainy season some of the citizens have uncivilized habits of opening septic tanks at peak hours,” the NVCO stated in lament. “Taking advantage of rainfall they open their septic tanks and creating a very terrible and unbearable smell. Sometime the smells are so strong that no matter what you do to make the smell disappear it won’t just go away and which is also very dangerous to the people with a health problem. This is the reason the NVCO Stating that every citizen wants to live a good and healthy life, the NVCO advised all to be responsible. “…any a time we miserably fail on our part to learn the ways and means of ensuring good health. Food, cloth and shelter alone cannot provide us a complete good health but also with sanitation a person is said to have secured sound health free from all kinds of harmful diseases,” the NVCO opined. “When we speak about sanitation, it is not just about our toilets and infrastructure but it is also about our social and behavioral changes which cannot be achieved by overnight and will take time and the time to act is now. There is a need to change the mindset of our people,” the NVCO added.