How effective are non-sewered sanitation solutions in keeping our water bodies free from contamination and pollution? This is what the conservancy inspector in the small town of Magura asked us today. A little background: she has worked in sanitation across Bangladesh for about 11 years and has been with the municipality for the last 9 years. She is also the driving force behind the faecal sludge treatment plant (FSTP) in Magura town, which, along with the town’s desludging trucks, has improved overall sanitation conditions in the town.
at Magura (centre) details the challenges of ensuring safe sanitation in the town
The main concern here is faulty containment: a large number of containment systems (and it is the same story in many South Asian cities) appear to be leaking into the stormwater drains around the clock. This discharges large quantities of pathogens into the adjoining drains, contaminating our surface water sources and harming public health and the environment. These pathogens can multiply into the millions while passing through stagnant drains, as the black colour of many city drains shows, and they are carried onwards into our canals and rivers as a serious source of pollution.
The next discussion was on how practical it is to enforce safe containment (installing a soak pit with the containment to prevent any contaminated overflow reaching the drain). A common suggestion was to enforce this through the building byelaws and, with proper monitoring and enforcement, ensure that at least new buildings have such provisions in place. However, the municipality already has a great deal to oversee, and even with care at the approval stage, it is almost impossible to keep a regular check on breaches. Imagine a single municipality tracking wrong outfall connections across 20,000 to 30,000 houses. That is a huge expectation and not practical.
So, here is what we thought could work: engage municipal sweepers and sanitation workers, who are typically available in adequate numbers, by assigning them the additional responsibility of monitoring and supervising illegal drain outlets, alongside their routine tasks of solid waste collection, street sweeping, drain cleaning, tank emptying and so on.
“Sanitation workers and sweepers are the ideal group to identify such faulty connections since they have been involved in the construction of drains and their job requires them to visit every settlement area of the municipality.”
– Conservancy Inspector, Magura town, Bangladesh
Connections into open drains are clearly visible, while those covered with slabs can be identified during periodic drain cleaning. Sanitation workers can also help spread awareness within the community and, with some training, undertake regular soak pit cleaning on request. The municipality would be responsible for public notification through added regulations, while the task of monitoring and reporting faulty toilet outlets would fall to municipal sweepers and sanitation workers. This approach would also give them the right to check whether a soak pit is in place within residential premises. Furthermore, the inspection and identification of faulty outlets could serve as a basis for imposing financial penalties on users after a deadline set by the municipality. Performance targets could also be explored, with a reward-based mechanism for the sanitation workers.
We also observed during the field visit that installing a soak pit alongside a septic tank could make more frequent tank emptying necessary, which presents an opportunity to introduce scheduled desludging. This is particularly relevant in contexts such as Bangladesh and Nepal, where municipalities typically achieve higher tax collection efficiencies. Scheduled desludging would then also cover cleaning of the soak pit. Looking more closely at the municipal tax collection mechanism in Bangladesh, all charges, including those for water, street lighting and conservancy (solid waste collection), are consolidated under the holding tax, which forms a significant revenue stream for the municipality. The tax framework further allows an additional levy of up to 12% (of the annual value of building and land) for sewerage or similar interventions. This makes it possible to provide regular tank emptying services at a nominal rate and removes the need to collect fees each time the service is requested.
Looking at the big picture, starting with proper containment could be the key to significantly improving the efficiency of the entire sanitation value chain, along with scheduled emptying and an efficient faecal sludge (FS) treatment set-up.
With the entire value chain fixed, non-sewered sanitation solutions can be effective in limiting wastewater pollution of surface water bodies. Should we involve sanitation workers as our frontline champions to improve the efficiency of the system?
What do you think?
