CSE’s Initiative for FSM in Ganga basin cities of Uttar Pradesh & Bihar- State level meetings

Uttar Pradesh

Mr. Chandra Bhusan, Deputy Director General, CSE, Dr Suresh Kumar Rohilla, Water Programme Director, and Sumit Kumar Gautam, Mangar, Water Programme (Ganga) CSE had a state level advocacy meeting with Mr. Manoj Kumar [Principal Secretary (PS), Urban Development, UP government] and Mr. Vishal Bhardwaj [State Misison Director – SBM] in Lucknow on 24th August 2017. 

Shit Flow Diagrams of Uttar Pradesh cities (Ramnagar, Chunar, Gangaghat and Bijnore) presented to PS, which played important role in apprising and in advocacy for the need of faecal sludge management. Mr. Kumar assured all support for the ongoing initiatives for effective fecal sludge management, citywide sanitation and Ganga river pollution abatement. Also, Mr. Kumar expressed keen interest to forge a long term association with CSE for technical support to UP government to address the issues of convergence among schemes like AMRUT, SBM, Namami Gange, and other state & local level initiatives. Mr Kumar, interalia, also assured the ULBs’ commitment for pilot FSTP/DWWTs. 

Following to this, the team visited Mr A K Gupta [Add. Director], RUCES - a regional institute coordinating the capacity building under AMRUT. RCUES showed its keen interest to partner with CSE in the ongoing initiatives of capacity building of ~ 650 ULBs on mutually decided key strategic areas. Under this, a cadre of 100 peoples coming comprising civil engineer, executive officers and town planners/architect will be trained through 10 training programme under AMRUT. The follow up activities would include signing a MoU between two institutes and design detailed plan for the above training programme.

Bihar:

Dr Suresh Rohilla (Programme Director) held a state level review cum planning meeting with Mr Chaitnaya Prasad, IAS- Principal Secretary, Urban Development and Housing Department [UD&HD] at his office in Patna on 22 May, 2017. The other members present were

1.Mr. Sanjay Dayal, Special Secretary

2. Mr Nikhil Ranjan, M & E Officer

3. Ms Shubhanjali Saxena, Environmental Officer

4. Mr. Anup, Sr Civil Engineer

In view of updates in the policies and scoring guidance of AMRUT, SBM, NCMG, CSE discussed its revised strategies to continue its engagement with the state government of Bihar. 

CSE proposed to help select ULBs in Bihar to develop their respective model City Sanitation Plans [CSPs]. This was in view of the inadequate technical skills of CSTF members to come up with a comprehensive CSP. CSE's role will include carrying out techno-economic feasibility study, surveys, come up with the detailed DPR and preparation of RFP. Principal Secretary also requested CSE to monitor the progress till during the construction phase till implementation. CSE agreed to extend their monitoring role in this regard.

For more information, kindly contact:

Dr Sumit Kumar Gautam
Programme Manager
sumit.gautam@cseindia.org

Dr Suresh Kumar Rohilla
Programme Director
srohilla@cseindia.org