Dear All,

I am managing a Urban Sanitation Programme in India on behalf of GIZ. The name of the programme is “Support to National Urban Sanitation Policy” (SNUSP).

Under the backdrop of bilateral cooperation between the Government of India and Germany, the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), government of India has requested GIZ for support at national, state and city level in implementing the National Urban Sanitation Policy (NUSP).
The National Urban Sanitation Policy adopted by the MoUD in 2008 was the crucial political step for improving the urban sanitation sector in India.

The vision of this policy is that “All Indian cities and towns become totally sanitized, healthy, livable”.

Under the Programme “Support to the National Urban Sanitation Policy” (SNUSP) GIZ provides technical support and work to improve the capacities and knowledge for implementing the NUSP in a improved and sustainable way. This support covers technical advise based on evidence, testing of sanitation solutions on the ground and development of the NUSP instruments, State Sanitation Strategies and City Sanitation Plans.

The SNUSP programme has successfully completed its 3 years of work which included support of all three goverment tiers at national, state and city level.

As part of the GIZ -SNUSP Programme, 6 Indian cities were supported in the preparation of their City Sanitation Plans (Cochin, Nashik, Raipur, Shimla, Tirupati and Varanasi).

Cities have been hand-held in implementing CSP activities like:
• Rehabilitation of sewerage system
• Hydraulic assessment of trunk sewer to avoid wastewater discharge in holy river Godavari
• Capacity building of plumbers associated with Municipalities in the cities
• Decentralised on-site waste water treatment system in areas where centralised conventional treatment systems are not viable i.e. coastal region and hilly ares
• Improved public toilet facilities in densely populated areas
• Improved sanitation condition in schools located in underserved areas

The objective is to capacitate Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in how to use CSPs to improve citywide sanitation and to promote working models, which later can feed into the preparation of the State Sanitation Strategies (SSS) for upscaling and to guide other cities in the replication of the same.

Relevant experiences, learnings and insights from the state, city and pilot level interventions by GIZ with its partners are fed into the national level policy dialogue. SNUSP made use of a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) comprising of highly recognised international and national experts and developed national advisories on Septage Management and Indian Water Utility. The roadmap on how to implement septage management in an integrated manner was acknowledged by MoUD. The ministry will use this with other states to guide the preparation of State Sanitation Strategy.

The planning, implementation and monitoring processes and tools, a wide selection of technical options and the main lessons learnt from the cities and states have been compiled in a manager’s handbook (CSP Primer) and a Self-Review Checklist. Those, together with the five pilot cities’ CSP and factsheets have been made available at the MoUD’s website to guide cities in the preparation of City Sanitation Plans.

moud.gov.in/NUSPpolicy


Till date the programme after 3 years has been able to demonstrate some significant outputs and outcomes including on-ground projects, policy advocacy to many knowledge products. In India, cities are emerging as the main economic centres and very soon more than half of its population will live in the cities putting immense pressure on basic services like sanitation, drinking water and others. To cope with the situation the country needs further support in infrastructure development, management, operation and maintenance. GIZ SNUSP will continue working hand in hand with the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India until 2017 to make the vision of NUSP that is “100% clean, hygienic and safe cities” a reality.

For more information visit our work at: www.urbansanitation.org


Author:

Dirk Walther
Senior Advisor
Support to the National Urban Sanitation Policy (SNUSP)
Sustainable Urban Habitat
Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, India