Capacity building of the municipal officials is essential for planning and implementing safe sanitation for all following City Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) approach. Practical Action and NGO Forum for Public Health have been instrumental in supporting Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) implementation in around ten cities of Bangladesh for the last few years. Now the cities are requesting more support in scaling up their sanitation services for the entire city and to all the citizens. A CWIS Plan is deemed necessary in this regard.
Under this backdrop, during October 16-18, 2022, ITN-BUET, Practical Action and NGO Forum for Public Health, in association with and CWIS-FSM Support Cell (CFSC), DPHE organized a three-day long specialized training course on CWIS for the participants from Mymensingh City Corporation and four Paurashavas (Barguna, Satkhira, Kalapara and Kalaroa Paurashavas). Thirty-one participants including four female participants attended the training event held at ITN-BUET.
The training event was inaugurated by Dr. Tanvir Ahmed, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, BUET, and Director of ITN-BUET. In addition to him, the resource persons included Master Trainers from University of Asia Pacific (UAP) and ITN-BUET. Moreover, sector experts from INGOs, e.g., Practical Action, WaterAid Bangladesh and SNV Netherlands Development Organization shared their experiences of implementing CWIS approach in Bangladesh.
This specialized training course on CWIS was designed as an in-depth dissemination on CWIS Principles and Frameworks for sanitation service delivery. In this process, the participants were oriented on equity, safety and sustainability related to sanitation and city mandated functions like responsibility, accountability, and resource planning and management. During every training session, several open discussion and question-answer platforms acted as a learning hub through learning-sharing of the participants’ experiences. The questions and queries made by the participants were addressed by the resource persons as well as by the other participants. The training was delivered in a blended theoretical and participants activity mode. In between sessions, there were additional experience sharing sessions by the sector partners and connecting sessions on relevant technologies, tools and laws/rules/regulations.
In the last session, the participants identified the necessary actions for their cities following CWIS outcome and system function indicators as well as NAP targets through an interactive group work. Each city group then made presentation on the CWIS and NAP implementing action items.
In the closing session, Mr. Rajib Kumar Sarkar, Secretary, Mymensingh City Corporation (MCC) said that although MCC had been implementing FSM with the support of NGO Forum for the last few years, they were still far away from delivering the safely managed sanitation service at citywide scale for all the city dwellers. He continued that the training was highly essential for them to implement CWIS and FSM at the densely populated Mymensingh City. The senior city officials from each Paurashava also made commitments to carry out safely managed sanitation activities following CWIS in their cities.
The closing and certificates awarding ceremony was graced by Prof. Dr. Tanvir Ahmed, Director, ITN-BUET, Mr. Alauddin Ahmed, Project Manager, ITN-BUET and Mr. Uttam Kumar Saha, Strategic Lead – Urban & Energy, Practical Action. Mr. Alauddin Ahmed applauded the participants for their active involvement during the training and stressed on taking the initiative forward. Mr. Uttam Kumar Saha said that the knowledge gained from this training would be highly beneficial for the training participants in developing CWIS Action Plan for their cities. The training event was concluded with the closing remarks from Prof. Dr. Tanvir Ahmed. He thanked Practical Action and NGO Forum for organizing the training program jointly. He also thanked ITN-BUET Team and the participants for making the training event successful.
