Changes in Bhubaneswar

The project team received some very disheartening news in a recent meeting with senior government officials: funding for the Community Toilets in Bhubaneswar has been drastically reduced. This budget cut translates to the construction for 34 of the 60 planned facilities being delayed indefinitely.

The timing of this news was especially difficult for the team as the tender documents for the 60 planned facilities had just been finalized and the release of the notice inviting bids from interested contractors thought to be imminent. Given the 15 months of effort that involved the close, often daily, interaction and coordination between numerous members of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and representatives of several consortium partners, this sudden change in budgets was incredibly deflating all-around.

The rationale behind the loss of funding to be allocated to Project Sammaan was rather vague, but this ultimately boils down to a case of missed opportunity. In 2012, when the project launched, it appeared as though there would be multiple sources of funding that would assist the BMC in its goal of building all 60 Community Toilets initially planned as part of Sammaan. As we reached the halfway mark of 2014, these options ceased to be in play. It is an unfortunate reality, but one we cannot escape from and are now adjusting to in an effort to keep the project alive and moving forward. Most disheartening though is the simple, brutal fact that literally thousands of people in Bhubaneswar’s slums will be forced to continue relying on whatever sanitation options are currently available, if any.

The ever-shifting realities affecting Project Sammaan (e.g., turnover at the municipal corporations and within the project team, waste management considerations, issues finding qualified contractors for construction, etc.) have caused a lot of aspects of it to shift on the fly; we have had to approach this as a very dynamic and fluid experience. By and large, the challenges previously faced did not substantively alter the project. That, unfortunately, is not the case with this latest hurdle.

Project Sammaan is not just an infrastructure project. It is an experiment seeking to test the viability of various innovations and their overall impact on reducing instances of open-defecation. As such, there is a considerable research component to the project. While this research will still be valid and extremely valuable, reducing the sample size for any study is never a good thing. Beyond this, the simple, brutal fact is that months and months of work by all partners on the project, whether at the municipal corporations or within the consortium, is now in jeopardy. There is still some optimism that additional funding will be secured for constructing the remaining 34 facilities, so all hope is not lost.

The team now is tasked with moving forward in identifying what sites will be built, and, consequently, what communities will receive a sanitation facility, and which will not. The team will now work with representatives from the BMC to do just that, and then submit the final list for what we are referring to as the “first round” of tenders.

This budget cut did not affect the number of Public Toilets to be built as part of the project. In fact, not only is funding for all 27 Public Toilet facilities assured, but there may even be a surplus of funds for these facilities. Assurances were made that any savings in funding for the Public Toilets will be reallocated to help fund construction of additional Community Toilet facilities, though no formal agreement on such has yet to be reached.

From the project team’s perspective, community toilets are the focus of Project Sammaan because urban slums are the most excluded group when it comes to safe, dignified sanitation infrastructure. And so the news that budget cut would affect community toilets over public toilets left us even more disheartened.

 

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