We are almost reaching the deadline for Brazil to fulfill its commitment to universal basic sanitation, but — even so — there are Brazilians who are unaware of the reality of the services. Around 1.2 million people live without a bathroom or even a toilet at home. There are 367 thousand households in precarious housing conditions. The number corresponds to 0.6% of the population in these conditions. The data are from the 2022 Demographic Census, released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
According to the research, Piauí (5.0%), Acre (3.8%) and Maranhão (3.8%) were the federation units with the highest rates. In 24 Brazilian municipalities, the proportion of the population residing in households with exclusive bathrooms was less than 50%.
On the other hand, in 415 municipalities, all occupied permanent private households registered had a bathroom for exclusive use.
Still according to the survey, in relation to the simplest sanitary facilities, in 1,529 municipalities, all households surveyed had at least a toilet or a waste hole; while in 169 municipalities more than 10% of the population lived in houses without a bathroom, toilet or hole.
In the opinion of the executive director of ABCON SINDCON (association of private sanitation operators), Percy Soares Neto, the research only shows that basic sanitation is still a structural problem that will not be resolved in the short term. For him, the legal framework for sanitation is the opportunity to offer infrastructure so that regions that lack better services can have adequate housing conditions.
“The use of these alternative solutions is received by the sanitation framework, so the sanitation framework recognizes in these situations that alternative solutions must be implemented and must be considered as solutions”, he assesses.
More attention from public authorities, a necessity
The lawyer and president of the National OAB Sanitation Commission, Ariana García, considers the regionalization process to be the main point of the New Sanitation Legal Framework. She says that there are still regions that need more attention from public authorities.
“Regionalization has other very important aspects that need to be considered very carefully, which is the sharing of ownership as it is a regionalized provision, respect for the municipality, which is above all respect for the users who will be served, who sometimes lose in this discussion due to the overvaluation of those who will provide this service in regionalization”, he observes.
Data from the 2022 Census show that the profile of inhabitants with this deprivation indicates that self-declared brown people prevailed in the total population deprived of a bathroom, accounting for 73.7% of the total in 2022. The self-declared white population accounted for 13. 8% while self-declared black women represent 10.6%.
Source: Brasil 61
Tags: Acre #2nd state highest percentage people live bathroom home
