Assessment of fecal sludge management practices in informal settlements of Dhaka city

Abstract

Achieving open defecation near to zero is a remarkable success of Bangladesh for attaining MDGs without confirming proper hygienic separation of excreta from human contact. However, under the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is now a focus on the whole sanitation service chain including safely collection, transportation, treatment and reuse of fecal sludge. Currently, 80% of city dwellers are relying on onsite sanitation services (OSS) in Dhaka city where safely managed fecal sludge is almost 0% and around 88% of households in slums are using latrines discharging directly or indirectly into drains or ditches that create environmental enteropathy. The cost of poor sanitation is overwhelming in Bangladesh, it is over 6% of the total GDP, or US$ 4.2 billion a year. The disease burden from water, sanitation, and hygiene at the global level is estimated to be 4% of all deaths, and 5.7% of total diseases. Research suggests that improved excreta management could reduce the diarrhoeal morbidity by 36 per cent. In addition to health benefits, improved sanitation has significant economic benefits, for example the return on one USD spent on water and sanitation improvements in low-income countries is 5-46 USD depending on the intervention. The purpose of this study was to assess the current sanitation services in informal settlements where one third of total city population are residing in Dhaka city. Moreover, this study was conducted to investigate current fecal sludge management practices available in informal settlements in Dhaka city. It was found that types, design and location of sanitation facilities is a critical factor for ensuring fecal sludge management in low income communities. In surveyed slums, under design pit latrines (44.40%) and latrines with septic tanks (33.38%) are dominating. However open defecation has remaining an area of concern for slums (22.22%) and squatters settlements (87.30%) as well. In slums, pit latrines with less than 5 rings (av.) are being used by more than 03 households where the average 38 households are using a latrine with septic tank. On the other hand, 79% of latrines with septic tanks don’t have any soak wells which creates another environmental threats and disease burden for the low-income communities. Desludging provision is absence in latrines. Emptying practices of FS from pits and septic tanks is very low; only 57% of the surveyed latrines in slums were emptied by both manual (42%) and mechanical (58%) emptier. Around 20% of latrine emptier need to enter in the containments for removing compacted sludge; similar response was found from the emptier groups. All lifting/ desludging stations of Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority are not permitted to dispose collected sludge of OSS facilities. Poor collection efficiency of available mechanical emptying services was a major challenge of this services and introducing of small tools and further improvement is required for increasing collection efficiency. Non-uniform rates were applied by different emptying services providers due to inadequate legal and regulatory basis of city authorities. Latrine with septic tank and mechanical emptying services have been recommended by the expert groups for ensuring safely managed sanitation facilities. The study responses the shortcomings of existing practices, policy implementations and gaps for improvements of existing fecal sludge management.