Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

1 8 0 / C H A L L E N G E S T O L I F E A N D W E L L - B E I N GCities: Competing Needs in an Urban EnvironmentGiven the wide array of technologies, and the community-wideimpacts of unhealthy water and sanitation systems, communityinvolvement is important in deciding on the most appropriatetechnologies when truly ‘safe’ options are unaffordable. Given weakand underfinanced utilities and local governments, communityinvolvement can also be important in determining how the chosensystems are to be financed, developed and maintained.Community-supported upgrading programmesFor most cities, the upgrading of programmes has particularimportance for water and sanitation for two reasons:■ it has been the primary means by which governments andinternational agencies have improved provision for water,sanitation and drainage within low-income urban settlementsover the last thirty years; andBox 7.6: Karachi, Pakistan – Orangi Pilot Project: when the community takes chargeThe Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) was initiated in 1980, by arenowned social scientist. At that time, the squattersettlement of Orangi had no access to sanitation. A majorityof the residents used bucket latrines emptied by a scavengerevery four or five days. Wealthier households constructedsoakpits; but these filled up after a few years and did notsolve the wastewater problem. In the absence of anunderground sewer system, open sewers crisscrossed thelanes. The infant mortality rate was high at 137 deaths per1,000 live births.Research by the OPP team revealed that theconnection fee charged by the Karachi Water andSewerage Board was extravagantly overpriced and that thiscost could be much reduced, all the while providingtechnical assistance to the residents.For each lane, the process involved overcoming thepsychological and economic concerns of the residents,organizing them into lane organizations, providing technicalsurveys and labour and cost estimates. The residents wouldselect a lane manager who would formally ask the OPP forassistance, collect the money and hold meetings. The OPPsupervised the process but at no time handled theresidents’ money.By the year 2000, about 98 percent of Orangi homeshad in-house latrines. The entire construction wasfinanced, supervised and constructed by the localpopulation with no external subsidies.The OPP programmes have also strengthened theposition of women in Orangi society and their participationin community affairs. Infant mortality has dropped to 37per 1,000 live births – far faster that the rest of Karachi.Because less money is spent on medical treatment, incomeis more available for other uses.The residents of Orangi were legal landowners with anincentive to invest their own time and money on building asewer system, a situation not commonly found in squattersettlements. Also, the natural slope of Orangi, which madeit possible to dispense with secondary sewer lanes to alarge extent, would not have been possible in flat terrain.However, the successful replication to over 35,000 homeselsewhere in Pakistan where there was no natural slopehas shown that these issues are not insurmountable.Because the community organizations and laneassociations often do not survive once the construction iscomplete, long-term maintenance of the system can be aproblem. Recently there has been a trend towards theformation of ‘community-based organizations’ to addressthis issue.The one-lane-at-a-time, open-ended, exploratoryphilosophy adopted by OPP has been criticized by somedevelopment agencies as lacking a master plan. However,the Orangi model has actually achieved better results inslum areas than conventional target-oriented approaches.Also, the overall project was developed according to amaster plan. As early as 1983, the OPP had preparedCircle Handbooks, identifying the secondary sewersrequired, the disposal points and the slope of the land.To avoid reliance on outside entities, the OPP haspreferred component-sharing rather than cost-sharing, anddonor funding or government subsidies have beenaccepted only for construction of trunk sewers.Source: Prepared for the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) by V. Srinivasan;P.-H. Gleick; C. Hunt at the Pacific Institute, 2002.