VHTs as friendly visitors or as sanitation inspectors: the
dilemma
There is one time I did not go to the field—my
colleagues told me that some people in Bukuma
village ran away when they saw the team approaching
their homes because they did not have latrines.
The above quote from Sajjabi, a 58-year-old woman
and VHT member, illustrates the problematic relationship
between the VHTs and some members of the community.
The friendly team of helpers sometimes created
fear among the community members due to the power
and authority they used to enforce their work. In an
FGD, exchanges between VHTs and other community
members illustrated the how the work of the VHTs proceeded
from providing sanitation advice to a campaign
of sanitation inspections:
VHT-1: It was not easy to convince someone that the
toilet is in their own interest. Sometimes the people
became harsh though some later accepted our advice.
But sometimes we could be forced to arrest those
who don’t see what we were telling them to be useful.
Interviewer: How did you arrest them without the
police?
VHT-1:We could take the report to the sub-county, of
all those people who refused to have toilets. Then the
sub-county offices would send soldiers to arrest them
and we would give clear directions to the homesteads.
R4: But in your method of work, I don’t think you just
go abruptly and arrest him. You first go to him, warn
him and educate him about the benefits of having a
latrine/toilet. You only arrest him when he refuses.
VHT-2: But if he fails to listen to me and I report
him, they begin complaining that we are harsh. For
example at Bwaziba, VHTs there invited us to arrest
some family without toilets because they feared to
arrest them and then be hated in their own village.
So we went and did the work for them.
The VHTs found themselves in a dilemma: they were
working as inspectors and using a force that did not portray
them as helpers. As they did not like to be viewed
like that in their own communities, they opted to swap
villages with their colleagues from neighbouring villages.
The chairman of the VHTs in the parish told me:
People need an iron hand because they do not listen.
But the last time we inspected homesteads, some
people were harsh, which intimidated many of our
colleagues and we became demoralized. Sometimes
the language that the people will hear is that the one
that scares them.