Rural Sanitation

The man­ner in which work has been man­aged at the LPP is given in the para­graphs below.

THE LPP RURAL SANITATION PROGRAMME

The LPP was established by Mr. Jahangir Khan Tareen in March 1999. A collaboration was established between the LPP and the local government on the OPP model. Through this collaboration local government builds the external development and the LPP motivates the communities to finance, manage and build internal development. Through the involvement of the NRSP the sanitation programme was taken to the rural areas.

Institutional Structure

Lodhran district consists of the three tehsils of Lodhran, Dunyapur and Kehror Pucca. The LPP has structured itself accordingly. There are field units at all three tehsils and a special unit at Khanpur. Each unit consists of three to four members, most of whom are diploma or trainee engineers and an office assistant. The senior member coordinates the team. The entire programme is supervised by Engineer Khalid Waraich, the municipal engineer at Lodhran.

Process

The process of initiating and developing the scheme is given below.

• On request from the Union Council (UC) in which the village is situated, the LPP-local government partnership carries out a survey to assess the feasibility of the scheme along with design and cost estimates. This is completed in seven to ten days.
• At meetings held with the community, plans and estimates are presented and a process of consensus development is initiated. This process may take anything from one month to one year to materialize.
• A Village Sanitation Committee (VSC) of fifteen to twenty members is formed at a village gathering held especially for this purpose.
• The VSC then forms five sub committees which are:
  1. Accounts Committee: Its work consists of keeping accounts, opening bank accounts, release of funds for the purchase committee, and payment for labour. The committee includes one person from the LPP as funds for external development come from the LPP.
  2. Material Purchase Committee: Its work is to ascertain the need for materials in advance and purchase of them in bulk.
  3. Supervisory Committee: It is responsible to check the quality of work and deal with on-site social, managerial and technical problems. It is assisted by the LPP supervisor.
  4. Recovery Committee: It is responsible for the collection of internal sewage cost. Recovery is different in different communities depending on the social structure of the village.
  5. House Connection Committee: This committee makes sure that all connections are properly made according to the LPP set standards.
• For disposal of the affluent five to ten marla land is required. This is provided by an individual who is paid for it. Often the cost can be reduced if the owner of the land is also given the right to use the waste water for irrigation purposes.
• Capacity building workshops are held to brief the community, especially the members of the VSC on their role and function and a an agreement on the role of community and LPP is signed.
• On 90 per cent recovery from the community the proposal for funding external development is sent to the LPP Chairman, Mr. Jahangir Khan Tareen. Funding is arranged in between seven to ten days.
• Work begins at site. Labour contractor is hired by the community. In most cases contractors hire skilled and unskilled labour from within the community.
• A site office is provided by the community and the LPP deputes a resident supervisor for the project whose food and accommodation is managed by the community.
• The complete scheme is handed over to the community (represented by VSC). The person who has provided land for the disposal station takes the responsibility of keeping the disposal functioning. In return he uses the sewage affluent for cultivation.
• VSC is responsible for the maintenance of the system minus the disposal works.

Standards

The standards used for the underground sanitation system are based on those developed by the OPP-Research and Training Institute (RTI). The underground sewage pipes are of RCC. All lane sanitation is of six inches diameter and the main and secondary sewers are of nine to fifteen inches diameter. The lane sewers are shallow since no vehicular traffic enters most of the lanes. House connections are made to the lane sewer through a small one chamber septic tank known universally as the haudi in all OPP-RTI replication projects. This prevents solids from entering the system and makes maintenance easier. Wherever haudis have been built, choking of the system has never taken place. All manholes are cylindrical and cast in-situ in steel shuttering. Thus they do not require plastering or skilled labour for construction.

Costs

In the eleven schemes built so far (and the plans and estimates for an additional twenty-eight villages which have been prepared), the ratio of internal development cost to external development has been of the ratio of 25:75 to 35:65. The major cost of external development has been the disposal system whose cost is approximately fifty per cent of the total cost of the scheme. Cheaper alternatives are being explored and it seems from initially research that this cost can be substantially reduced. It is possible to reduce internal is to external cost to 50:50 or even 65:35.

The cost of internal development works out to 1,000 – 1,500 Rupees per household and the cost of haudi connection is around 400 Rupees. Most households find this affordable but can only pay after harvest time. In many cases destitute or poor households have been subsidized by their richer neighbours since without their participation the lane sewer could not be constructed. Meanwhile, the five to ten marla plot for sewage disposal has cost approximately 30,000 to 50,000 Rupees.

So far, funds for external development for ten villages have bee arranged by Mr. Jahangir Khan Tareen and CIDA has provided funds for two villages. From now on funds for external development will be provided through the World Bank approved projects for hundred villages.