Tamil Nadu - Nagapattinam   

Village school gets `ecosan' toilet

Special Correspondent

It includes a sanitary napkin incinerator

HYGIENIC: The toilet block at Kameshwaram in Nagapattinam district.

NAGAPATTINAM: A school in a tsunami-affected village in the district has been provided with `ecosan' toilet, a first of its kind in the State.

N. Thiruvengadam, Assistant District Project Officer of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, inaugurated the environment-friendly toilet constructed at the St. Sebastian School in Kameshwaram. He said that true education should aim at inculcating in the minds of children the need for promoting health and hygienic practices that were also environmentally friendly.

He praised the volunteers of Savior Oser La Solidarite (SOS) of France who took up part-time work in the past three months, besides raising Rs.2 lakh, to construct the toilet, which would benefit 600 students.

G. Kanagasundaram, president of Kameshwaram panchayat, said that the village already had 159 `ecosan' toilets. He thanked the Society for Community Organisation and Peoples Education (SCOPE) for designing the Ecosan Urine Diversion Toilet (EUDT) that would will be a model for the whole State.

"Very effective"

M. Subburaman, Director of SCOPE, said that EUDT was very environment-friendly since the faeces got composted in the toilet within six months and the urine was used for watering the cashew plants in the adjacent plot. The EUDT in the school had two blocks — one for boys and the other for girls.

A sanitary napkin incinerator was also installed at the toilet campus.

It was constructed at a cost of Rs.2.5 lakh and the management of the school had donated Rs.20,000.

Antonin Benyacar and Annabelle Didier, two French students who have been studying livelihood alternatives for fisherman at Kameshwaram and nearby villages, appreciated the readiness of the villagers and school management to have the revolutionary model of toilet.

Celine Ben of SOS & Coordinator of the project in France and now on a visit to India thanked the school management for giving them a chance to help students in far-away India.

P. Mary Emily Pushpam, correspondent of the school, S. Rajamanickam, president, Parent-Teacher Association and Shanti Mathikumar and V. Balakrishnan, Headmaster, spoke.

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