By Peter Duru, Makurdi

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has identified the COVID-19 pandemic as a major challenge in the execution of its Water, Sanitation and Hygiene WASH intervention among others.

The global organization observed that the protocols put in place to contain the spread of the virus had slowed down the pace of work both for the software and hardware activities thereby also hampering the attainment of set targets in the WASH intervention.

These were part of the key challenges reeled off yesterday by the UNICEF Enugu Field Office WASH Specialist, Mr. Timi Kiabuku during a Two Day Enugu Field Office Mid Year Review virtual Meeting held on July 21 and 22, 2020.

According to Mr. Kiabuku, “COVID-19 has remained the greatest challenge of this part of 2020. With heavy restrictions in movement of people and the protocols associated with stopping the spread of the virus, pace of work has terribly slowed down, both for software and hardware activities.

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“Government offices have not been running full house with work from home for staff and inability to meet in person for planning has delayed decision making and advancement of work.

“The impact of COVID-19 will be primarily faced in the sanitation activities and the timeline for achieving Open Defecation Free, ODF, Local Government Areas, LGAs.

“Devising new ways to undertake community mapping, triggering sessions, trainings and consultations has not been easy, and has derailed some of the set targets.

“There is a consistent fear that despite adoption of new protocols, the Community Led Total Sanitation, CLTS, sessions in the field might be potential ground for spread of the virus.

“New ways of working around the revised health protocols requires increased funding and support. This is putting strain on the already constrained state budgets especially with large part of state budgets already allocated towards COVID response.”

“Financing sanitation remains a challenge . While allocations have been made by the states, the challenge is around the ‘release’ of funds for activities.”

Continuing he said, “LGA WASH Units support WASH interventions at the community level but are not yet part of the formal government structure. The WASH units do not receive statutory budgetary allocation from the government for operations.”

Vanguard