Webinar: Understanding the Septage Desludging Models: What works and What doesn’t work?

Professor Juliet Willetts
Professor and Research Director, University of Technology Sydney, Institute for Sustainable Futures, Wombarra, Australia

Professor Juliet Willetts leads applied research to improve development policy and practice, addressing social justice and sustainable development, including achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She is a recognised expert in the field of water and sanitation in low- and middle-income country contexts, and also works on gender equality, civil society role in development, governance and accountability, climate change, urban development, monitoring, evaluation and development effectiveness more broadly. She is recipient of six professional awards for research excellence, and leads sectoral efforts to promote evidence-based approaches as Academic Co-Chair of the Research for Development Impact (RDI) Network and is a founding member of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) policy reference group. Her work includes independent research, evaluation and consultancy for the Australian aid program, bilateral and multilateral agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Professor Willetts leads the Institute’s international development research team and supervises several doctoral students focused on innovation in aid effectiveness, particularly in the water and sanitation sector.

Dorai Narayana
International FSM Consultant, Malaysia

DORAI NARAYANA has a Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from IIT Madras, India and a Graduate Certificate in Engineering (Environmental Management) from Melbourne University. His professional experience spans over 40 years in the sewerage industry, and he has worked for consultants, government as well as the national sewerage utility company. He has also contributed in advisory capacities for various sanitation and sewerage projects in various developing countries in Asia and Africa, and participated as a member of several Government technical committees and international forums. He is now a consultant in the sanitation and sewerage sector, working in Malaysia, India and Africa with various international agencies including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, AIT Bangkok, ADB and others. He has also presented several papers at local and international forums and has authored a book titled Co-Treatment of Septage and Fecal Sludge in Sewage Treatment Facilities. His main areas of expertise include policy and strategy formulation, catchment planning, sewer network, sewage / sludge treatment facility planning and design, sludge / septage management planning, asset management and capital works planning.

Budi Darmawan
Private Sector FSM Consultant, Indonesia

Budi Darmawan has vast experience in several fields for more than 30 years in the areas of waste water, sanitation to marketing, and corporate to retail. In the last 18 years, he dedicated his work specifically on small-medium-enterprises development. In the last 7 years of his career, he has been involved in the processes from understanding customer needs, local resources and all of those combinations with the help of information technology.

He has done immense work for regularizing desludging services in Indonesia by providing his expertise for the engagement of private Sector in regular desludging, establishment of the processes for optimum septage collection system and desludging in densely populated areas, development of scheduled emptying business by identification of local content and development and establishment of android based information technology application to support above initiatives. .

Aasim Mansuri
Sr. Program Lead, CWAS, CEPT University

Aasim Mansuri is a Senior Program Lead at the Center for Water and Sanitation (CWAS), CEPT University in Ahmedabad. He has over 12 years of experience in WASH sector. He has worked with governments and sector partners at all levels (national, state, city) for planning and implementation of WASH programmes. He is actively engaged in supporting implementation of city sanitation plans in small and medium towns of Maharashtra with a focus on Faecal Sludge and Septage Management. He is the lead person for implementing Citywide Inclusive sanitation (CWIS) program of BMGF in Wai city of Maharashtra. He is the lead person and part of the team that has planned and implemented first of its kind scheduled desludging services in two towns of India. He provides technical support in implementation of Swachh Maharashtra Mission for Urban Areas at state level and leads the capacity building activities undertaken by the center for various stakeholders on sanitation. He is a member of the National Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (NFSSM) Alliance that advocates for FSSM at national level in India. He is a technical and project management professional with an executive education from Harvard Business School with a Masters degree on Urban (Infrastructure) Planning from CEPT University and a B.Tech in Civil Engineering from Nirma University

Niladri Chakraborti
Senior Specialist TNUSSP

Niladri leads the City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation Program (CWIS) in Trichy. He did his Masters in Ecology and Environmental Science and Population Studies. Niladri is a WASH and Public Health practitioner with more than 17 years of experience. His functional areas have been City wide inclusive sanitation planning and implementation, FSM, water quality monitoring and surveillance, supply chain improvement in rural sanitation. In the domain of public health, he has successfully forayed into the National Disease Control Program, National Rural Health Mission for Sikkim, Bio-medical waste management for the public health systems of Tripura, and National Urban Health Mission for Odisha.

Rajesh Ramamoorthy
Specialist TNUSSP

Rajesh is a Senior Specialist at IIHS. He has been pursuing interdisciplinary research and practice in the water and sanitation space for over 5 years. He holds a Master's degree in Water Science and Governance. At TNUSSP, he works across thematic areas such as governance, capacity building and tools for monitoring FSSM.

Debisha Sharma
Associate Project manager , CDD Society, Bangalore

Debisha is an Associate Project Manager at CDD Society, Bengaluru. She has experience working on FSM in over 20+ cities in India and Afghanistan in various aspects such as planning, capacity building andapplied research over the last 5 years. She has extensively interacted with desludging operators in and around Bengaluru to understand their social and business networks, their concerns with regulations and their business operations and expanse. She was instrumental in bringing together the desludging operators Bengaluru in an informal network called Desludging Service Providers Association. Apart from Bengaluru, the FSM planning studies Debisha has been involved in included a critical component focusing on desludging operators.