The Covid-19 global pandemic has upheld the importance of safe health and hygiene practice for all. One of the major duty-bearers for maintaining a healthy and clean environment for city dwellers is the waste and sanitation workers. These frontline workers come across different people, households, roads, hospitals, and other institutions during their services. Waste, especially from hospitals, have high possibilities to spread the virus. Moreover, these workers and their families are generally socially and economically marginalized, living in congested colonies, slums or low-income informal settlements with limited access to basic services. Given the nature of their work and their living conditions, they are at high risk of becoming infected by COVID-19. Without regular and dedicated service from the frontline workers, it will be nearly impossible for city authorities to maintain their support mechanism against the spread of the disease. Ensuring the health and safety of these workers and their families for mitigating any risk of spread of the infection through their movement is crucial to continue their services.
International Training Network (ITN), a center for water supply and waste management of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), in coordination with the Department of Public Health Engineering and financial support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is supporting the ‘scaling of City Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) and FSM services in Bangladesh through a national level capacity building program’. This program aims to build the capacity of Paurashavas and DPHE to implement CWIS/FSM projects successfully in Bangladesh by enhancing the capacity of mayors, municipal council, service providers and relevant stakeholders. Due to the Covid-19 situation, ITN-BUET is currently working on capacity building of the waste and sanitation workers along with Paurashava officials working with these workers.
The program is implemented with technical and consultation support from CWIS-FSM Support Cell, a national nodal agency for FSM under the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives (MoLGRDC). ITN-BUET and CWIS-FSM Support Cell are taking a number of initiatives to change the practice. Understanding the impact of these interventions is equally crucial for continuing the interventions and scaling up of these actions by others.
Given the above context, ITN-BUET is seeking proposal from a potential consultant to conduct a baseline survey/assessment study to understand the profile of the workers and other service providers. The Consultant will also conduct an evaluation study and develop recommendations for further improving the service and scaling up.
Application process
Interested individual/agencies are requested to submit their relevant Individual/Organizational Profile, a Technical Proposal and a Financial Proposal along with a brief Expression of Interest Letter, CV of key personnel and relevant documents to the following:
The soft-copy of the proposal should be sent to (compulsory): diritn@itn.buet.ac.bd
The hard-copy of the proposal should be sent to (optional): ITN-BUET, ARI-ITN Building (4th Floor), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh, with the subject line “Consultancy Assignment for assessment and activity evaluation of waste and sanitation workers on safe health and hygiene practice during service delivery in selected cities of Bangladesh”.
Last date of submission: 15 September 2020
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