Study on the sustainability of CBO - managed water and sanitation service in slums of Dhaka city

Abstract

It is a big challenge for poor communities, local governments and implementing agencies worldwide to meet the Millennium Development Goal of having sustainable access to safe drinking water supply and sanitation for all by 2015. But adequate water supply and sanitation are vital for a healthy living. According to the Human Development Report 2006, 1.8 million child deaths are occurring each year as a result of diarrhea. Besides, there is loss of 443 million school days every year from water related illness, about half of population of developing countries suffering at any given time from water and sanitation related diseases and millions of women spending several hours a day fetching water. For a long time Dhaka city is suffering problems associated with the delivery of water and sanitation facilities in slum areas. The population of Dhaka city has been increasing rapidly in the last 25 years. About 22 percent of the urban inhabitants live in the slums. Less than one – third of that population have access to safe water supply and one-fifth have access to proper sanitation services, though more than 35 NGOs are working for providing safe water Sanitation (WATSAN) services to the poor people in this city for more than two decades. There is evidence that poor people are very willing to invest in safe water supply and sanitation services (though they may be more able to do so through organization/labor/materials than with cash), which is not surprising since their livelihoods are very dependent on these services. Community Based Participatory approaches in the WATSAN Sector were developed during the early 1990s, after realizing the problems associated with the top-down and supply driven approach in this sector implemented in earlier years. Community participation, management and empowerment may mean a substantial shift in the distribution of the cost burden of implementing WATSAN systems, and therefore it should increase the chances of their execution. Besides, WATSAN interventions have a higher chance to be sustainable if they involve local populations in the planning, designing and implementation stages of the project cycle. The present research study has focused to analyze the sustainability of CBO –managed WATSAN services in slums of Dhaka City. To do so, the study has compared the hygiene practices of CBO and Non CBO-managed slums in case of providing WATSAN services in the studied slums of Dhaka City. It has also pointed out the changes brought in the community over the years. Finally, the study has tried to measure the sustainability of the intervention using CBO based approach, which has raised some recommendation. It is expected that the recommendation put forth in this study would be helpful in achieving sustainable WATSAN services in the slum areas of Dhaka city.