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Uttar Pradesh Government partners with New-Delhi based NGO CSE, to manage faecal sludge in the state's Ganga basin cities

CSE to help prepare city sanitation plans for four towns in Uttar Pradesh

  • CSE Ties up with Uttar Pradesh Urban Development Department and State Namami Gange Department under Swacch Bharat Mission

  • Partnership launched with a three-day workshop in Lucknow 

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

  • 4 towns from Uttar Pradesh have been selected as flagship cities – Chunar, Ramnagar, Bijnor and Gangaghat

  • The programme aims to train municipal functionaries to develop city owned city sanitation plans 

  • All target cities have set up Swachh Bharat City-Level Taskforce / City Sanitation Task Force with varied stakeholders

Lucknow, December 5, 2016: Economic progress and rampant and unregulated development is turning India’s rivers and streams into sewers due to excessive pollution, especially from urban settlements. India’s ambitious Swacch Bharat Mission has targeted 400 cities to become Open Defecation Free (ODF) by end of 2016. However, the process to achieve a “swachh Bharat” cannot afford to ignore interventions that focus on effective faecal sludge management.

With this as the premise, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in partnership of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), Ministry of Urban Development and National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), Ministry of Water Resources for River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Government of India are converging to support the ‘Capacity Building Initiative on Citywide Sanitation for Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in the Ganga Basin States’. Cities in this belt are struggling to overcome challenges of human excreta management, resulting in the pollution of major rivers and streams.

To address the above gap, CSE and the Uttar Pradesh Urban Development 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 Bijnor, Gangaghat, Ramnagar and Chunar in Uttar Pradesh along with six other cities in Bihar and West Bengal. The alliance launched this partnership here with a three-day training workshop from December 5-7, 2016. This is the second handholding training programme for city officials to help them prepare city sanitation plans (CSPs) with focus on effective septage and faecal sludge management.

The list of people who are undergoing training includes state officials concerned with SBM, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), States Level Program Management Groups (SPMG), Commissioners, Executive Officers and other senior municipal functionaries of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. This training is part of an ongoing series of capacity building activities to support Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to develop citywide sanitation plans with special emphasis on effective faecal sludge management.

Addressing the workshop, Suresh Rohilla, Programme Director – Urban Water Management, CSE, said, “90% of onsite sanitation systems in Ganga basin towns and cities are contributing septage and faecal waste which is untreated and improperly managed. The situation is grave in Chunar, Bijnor, Ramnagar and Gangaghat, where almost 100% of the septage and faecal sludge generated is untreated and unscientifically disposed of.”

Speaking on the occasion, Shreeprakash Singh, IAS, Secretary, urban development, government of Uttar Pradesh, highlighted the need for a practical solution for cities in Uttar Pradesh to address the issue of sanitation, with focus on septage management. He specified the need for effective solutions for approximately 700 ULBs of Uttar Pradesh which includes focusing on capacity building of municipal functionaries and understanding decentralised, non-capital incentive approaches for effective sanitation management. In addition, he specified the need for a ‘model city’ in Uttar Pradesh to showcase the importance of integration of faecal sludge management in CSPs. 

Rakesh Kumar Mishra, IAS, Director, Directorate of Urban Local Bodies, Uttar Pradesh, and Mr. Vishal Bharadwaj, Additional Director, Urban Development Department, Uttar Pradesh, voiced their support to the cities for the handholding process. Mr. Bharadwaj stressed on prioritising septage management in cities as 31 towns of Uttar Pradesh have not progressed towards achieving ODF status by December 2016. Hence this is an opportunity for Uttar Pradesh to showcase end-to-end septage management. Mr. Bharadwaj said, “Capital investment for sewerage is huge, and is estimated to be 1,35,000 crores, which is near impossible to implement hence septage management should be prioritised”. 

Cities have shown commitment to plan strategically to achieve the preparation of CSPs where the process has been initiated. This includes forming their city sanitation task force and identifying key issues in the city’s sanitation sectors. 

 


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Tags: Ganga basin cities,