Practical Action

The video focused on health safety issues of the sweepers while doing the emptying job. The low-cost and sustainable solutions introduced by Practical Action, Bangladesh. The innovation not only reduce emptying hazards but also ensure safe transportation and disposal.

In Bangladesh improved sanitation consists largely of latrines and septic tanks. Human waste from these facilities is dumped untreated in waterways or down drains, causing alarming health risks to all. In the Faridpur district of Dhaka, Practical Action is working with the government, pit emptiers the private sector, local development partners and other organisations to install a faecal sludge management system.

Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) initiative in Satkhira Municipality by Practical Action, Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh improved sanitation consists largely of latrines and septic tanks. Human waste from these facilities is dumped untreated in waterways or down drains, causing alarming health risks to all. In the Faridpur district of Dhaka, Practical Action is working with the government, pit emptiers the private sector, local development partners and other organisations to install a faecal sludge management system.

The video talks about the need for proper waste and faecal sludge management (FSM) and its possibility to contribute in organic fertiliser production in Bangladesh. Use of organic fertiliser can improve soil health as well as crop productivity. Proper waste and faecal sludge management (FSM) can ensure adequate production of organic fertiliser.

Practical Action Bangladesh is converting faecal waste to compost and supplying it to farmers in Bangladesh. Hasin Jahan, Country Director for Bangladesh talks about the challenges in dealing with faecal waste in Bangladesh.

The module is targeted for small business owners and workers in sludge management sector. Entrepreneurs who need to attract and satisfy customers to sustain their business would benefit from this training.

The municipality of Faridpur has elaborated its vision for a “sustainable and safe city-wide faecal sludge management system serving all municipal residents and institutions in Faridpur municipality by 2025”, to achieve sustainable FSM component of the City Development Plan. This vision involves addressing the three systemic problems that create binding constraints on the emergence of scaled, environmentally safe, and financially sustainable private sector-led functions in the faecal sludge system. This project proposes to implement a set of activities that will further elaborate the investment needs of the municipality and support it to access investment financing, while taking initial steps to pilot, and test the economics of scale-up of solutions to the systemic problems identified. The proposed solutions to be supported in this project are:

Setting standards of containments for monitoring the construction and uses and capacity building of local masons for construction of standard containments to improve the containment standards throughout the city;
Forming public-private partnership for collection and transportation with sweeper groups (informal pit emptiers group) by sustainably building the capacity of collection and transportation services;
Promotion of safe disposal at the new treatment plant (planted drying bed and unplanted drying bed) instead of disposing of it unsafely in the environment;
Treatment infrastructure development and public-private partnership for treatment plant operation by creating an operational treatment plant by constructing the plant and forming SLA (service level agreements) with private treatment Plant Operator (TPO) to run the plant; and
Formation of a coherent national regulatory framework and guidelines for faecal sludge management, combined with the current limited national capacity and devising a sectoral coordination mechanism to coordinate the sector stakeholders by establishing a sludge network.
Goal(s):

To establish effective and consistent sludge management services across the whole of Faridpur City sustaining itself through results-based public-private partnerships, ensuring the city’s sustainably healthy environment and its people health.

Objectives:

To establish sustainable city-wide faecal sludge management system serving all municipal residents in Faridpur municipality by 2025
To finalise the National FSM Regulatory Framework and strengthening sectoral coordination for improved knowledge and learning exchanges
Documents available for download:

1. Presentation about this project at FSM3 Conference in Hanoi (January 2015)
Format: pdf file
Size: 0.73 MB

2. Paper presented at WEDC Conference in Loughborough, UK (July 2015): Faecal sludge management in Faridpur, Bangladesh: scaling up through service level Agreements
Format: pdf file
Size: 0.42 MB

3. Powerpoint presentation to go with the WEDC paper
Format: pdf file
Size: 1.01 MB

A business model has been developed for Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) in Faridpur, adopting a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach. Through this model, the municipality provides city-wide customer service at an affordable price. The service providers are regulated for accountable and user-friendly services by the municipality to ensure a sustainable service system.

The success of FSM largely depends on the responsiveness of the citizens. A bothway relationship between responsible leaders and responsive citizens is important to make this system sustainable. A social mobilization campaign has been conducted in Faridpur targeting all segments of population to make everyone aware, sensitise and responsive regarding safe management of faecal waste and individual’s law-abiding role.