Bihar government joins hands with New-Delhi based NGO CSE to manage sewage in the state's Ganga basin cities

CSE to help prepare city sanitation plans for four towns in Bihar

• Ties up with Bihar Urban Development Department and State Namami Gange Department under Swacch Bharat Mission

• Partnership launched with a three-day workshop in Patna which concludes today

• 12 Ganga basin cities targeted under this initiative across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttarakhand

• Programme aims to train municipal functionaries

• CSE to set up India’s first referral laboratory for faecal waste for effective faecal waste management and mainstreaming decentralised wastewater treatment

• CSE to develop independent Ganga monitoring plan 

Patna, September 22, 2016: India’s ambitious Swacch Bharat Mission has targeted 400 cities that are likely to become Open Defecation Free (ODF) by the end of 2016. However, the process to ensure a ‘swacch’ Bharat cannot ignore the larger aspects of huge volumes of sewage faecal sludge from septic tanks, which will increase manifold with additional toilets being constructed. This is especially true of sites which are dependent on on-site sanitation, particularly in cities along the Ganga basin.

It is to address this gap that Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the New Delhi-based policy advocacy organisation, the Bihar Urban Development Department and the State Namami Gange Department have partnered to provide handholding support to cities for preparing their city-wide sanitation plans with effective septage management. The initiative aims to build capacity of municipal functionaries from the cities of Buxar, Katihar, Muzaffarpur and Bodhgaya in Bihar, along with eight other cities in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttarakhand. The alliance launched this partnership here with a three-day training workshop from September 20-22, 2016.

Addressing the workshop, Suresh Rohilla, Programme Director – Urban Water Management, CSE, said: “There should be a convergence in the preparation of City Sanitation Plans between the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Swacch Bharat Mission, Namami Gange and the Smart Cities programme. Each city can and should set up a ‘Swacch City Stakeholders Task Force’ to ensure sustainable sanitation programming.”  

Speaking on the occasion, Chaitanya Prasad, secretary, urban development, government of Bihar, highlighted the imperative for septage management and emphasised that the effort should be towards a City Sanitation Plan that can be implemented. This, he said, would require a proper implementation strategy, including a model Request for Proposal (RFP), involvement of third party organisations if required, operational guidelines, legal framework, technological options and procurement guidelines among others.

CSE has proposed to set up India’s first referral laboratory for faecal waste to support planning, design and implementation of effective faecal waste management systems and mainstreaming decentralised wastewater treatment. CSE will also develop an independent Ganga monitoring plan to support pollution abatement efforts already being pursued under Namami Gange programme by the Central and state governments.

For further details please contact

• Naveen Kumar, Deputy Programme Manager, Water Programme, naveen@cseindia.org / 7898129476

• Hemanth Subramanian, CSE Media Resource Centre, hemanth@cseindia.org / 9836748585.