TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE FAECAL SLUDGE MANAGEMENT IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS OF BANGLADESH: A CONTEXT-SENSITIVE MODEL

Abstract

Informal settlements suffer health issues due to inadequate toilet facilities and unsafe faecal sludge management (FSM). In addition to the people's unsafe management, sweepers provided emptying services informally with unsafe methods, and authorities adopted city-wide vacutug-based services where informal settlements are excluded. This paper explores factors causing unsafe FSM and develops a contextual model that includes informal settlements with environmentally safe city-wide services. It took Notun-Bazar Char Khulna as a case, and purposefully sampled toilets, settlement people, sweepers, and key persons for interview and group discussions. These responses located some existing sanitation intervention factors responsible for unsafe containment, emptying, conveyance, and discharge practice. This paper proposes equitable, impenetrable, and emptiable containment, periodical emptying and conveyance, adaptive equipment, adaptive health safety kit, and proximal safe discharge location as components of a context-sensitive model to include informal settlements with a city-wide environmentally safe FSM system.