Improved sanitation for Bhubaneswar & Cuttack
During the month of June, J-PAL’s field work in Bhubaneswar focussed on completing the on-going census survey, and identifying additional communities in Bhubaneswar for proposed community sanitation facilities. So far, J-PAL has collected data in close to 80 community locations.
The tendering process for all building works remains the same whether it is roads, railways, or sanitation; the simple objective is to construct the infrastructure or facilities by a contractor.
As Project Management Consultants, Arkitechno evaluates the capabilities of the contractor and then supervises the work along with quality control, check-in measurements and payment certification.
CTRAN is the project partner interfacing with the Government and has been instrumental in ensuring smooth progress of the project since its commencement. We have facilitated close liaison with the Government and other project partners, and have been actively involved in all activities from site selection to validation of layouts and designs, tendering process, branding, coordinating exposure visits, and taking feedback from the Government.
In short, CTRAN has been the interfacing tool between Project Sammaan and the Government.
As the Central Project Manager for Project Sammaan, my responsibilities include managing workstreams of all the partners and providing strategic liaising with senior bureaucrats in both the BMC and CMC, as well as other government departments in Orissa.
The key objective of my role is to ensure that the project is completed within the planned timelines. I work towards enhancing the communication between various partners and between the project team through weekly calls and facilitating discussions among partners to sort out pending issues. I also manage the field activities of Quicksand, which includes coordination among field partners for site identification, site surveys and approvals.
The sanitation in India is in a critical state with sanitation habits varying based on socio-cultural practices. In a country with 35% of the population illiterate, effective communication of public health-related issues, like sanitation, is a big challenge. In spite of mega ventures like Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) and the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC, also known as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan), 60% of the population does not have a proper structure for defecation and 90% of children’s feces is not properly managed, 23 million children below the age of 14 in urban India are at risk from poor sanitation, and 8 million children in urban areas are at risk from poor water supply leading to diarrheal disease.
Despite these programs, around 60% percent of the population remains without access to adequate sanitation. The vast majority of this unreached population is poor, rural inhabitants. By a simple estimate, India needs to ensure an additional 106 million people have access to toilets to meet the MDG target. Approximately one million people, most of them children, die due to sanitation-related diseases every year. Additionally, shame, indignity, and nuisance are inflicted upon millions of its’ people due to inadequate sanitation.
CFAR’s role in Project Sammaan is to actively engage in facilitating community interactions in the field for: social mapping of each slum, community engagement and dialogue during design and construction phases, and facility management training for community members to help ensure the endeavour’s sustainability.
Presently, we are working on developing a strategy and implementation action plan for community intervention. A communication framework was developed that identified the specific issues that might affect Project Sammaan at the community level, which included strengthening the capacity of staff on specific inputs needed for individual slums, and developing activity checklists for specific project deliverables. Apart from this, CFAR is supporting Quicksand and J-PAL when required at the community level for the project.
This is a series of posts that shares more about the project partners and the important roles each plays
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a network of 70 affiliated professors around the world who are united by their use of Randomized Evaluations (REs) to answer questions critical to poverty alleviation. J-PAL’s mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is based on scientific evidence.
J-PAL is the primary grantee and the project’s principal investigators and are designing and conducting the monitoring and evaluation for the facilities. They will test and scientifically evaluate the project and its various experiments using a randomised-controlled-trial methodology.
This is part of a series of posts that shares more about the project partners and the important roles each plays.
CTRAN Consulting manages large, complex development projects by providing a mix of program management and technical assistance.
For Project Sammaan, they are the one-point contact for interfacing with various government agencies. In this role, they facilitate meetings with government representatives, assist in the land approval process, and are establishing Project Management Offices within BMC and CMC.
This is a series of posts that shares more about the project partners and the important roles each plays
At its most basic level, Project Sammaan will provide functional sanitation facilities to slum communities that desperately need them. As such, the insights and learnings that led to the development of the project’s interventions need to be translated into brick-and-mortar buildings, meaning that an architectural firm, particularly one with a keen sense of function as well as form, is vital.