Kevin Tayler writing on ...

Kevin Tayler writing on Community of Practice on Hygiene and Sanitation in Development Countries, a platform on LinkedIn has this to say "Writing from Dhaka after a week in Comilla, I feel that Deepak underestimates the problems associated with ending open defecation in Bangladesh. While it seems to be true that great strides have been made in convincing rural people of the need to use toilets rather than to defecate in the open, much remains to be done on the urban side. To give some examples. There is virtually no functioning 'official' sewerage in Dhaka city (although there are combined sewerage systems discharging locally) which means that almost all the faecal material produced ends up in watercourses, which amounts to open defecation at a distance. No other town or city in Bangladesh has formal sewerage. It is true that many people, particularly in low-income areas, rely on on-site sanitation but there are virtually no faecal sludge removal and transport services and, to my knowledge, only one small faecal sludge treatment plant - installed with help from Practical Action. Programmes such as UPPR are promoting the use of twin pit toilets, which in theory should produce sludge that is safe to handle and can be used as an agricultural input but the reality in Bangladesh, as in other places, is that people do not use the twin pit system as intended by its designers. When both pits are full, the waste has to be removed, which is normally done manually, with the sludge disposed of to a nearby watercourse. So, yes there has been much progress here but there remains a long way to go before we can really say that areas are ODF. Charles is right on this issue and I think raises the other important question as to what will happen in the long term".