WELL BRIEFING NOTE 31                              Go Back

Initiatives to stimulate demand for sanitation have seen a growth in supply mechanisms, to match that demand. A growing number of informal private providers for sanitation services – such as supplying basic latrine components or emptying pit latrines – can be responsive to fluctuating demand, having the flexibility to provide a range of services that suit financial and other household constraints.

Each provider offers some form of comparative advantage within its particular market niche. In a competitive market, private providers have to be cost-effective, to generate sufficient profit to stay in business while also offering a satisfactory level of service to retain existing and generate new customers. In general terms, private sector NSPs are able to be more responsive to user demand than government departments. Some NGOs have also demonstrated good capacity to pilot innovative approaches, generating more demand for sanitation which can be scaled-up in partnership with government.

Sanitation Partnerships

No single provider, private or public, has the overall advantage or capacity for providing extensive sanitation services. Development programmes increasingly explore opportunities for sanitation partnerships between local government, NGOs, CBOs and the private sector, to achieve effective, workable and sustainable solutions. This is achieving promising results in the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach to rural sanitation provision in Bangladesh, India and other Asian countries.

A more detailed explanation of the CLTS approach can be found in WELL Briefing Note 18: Achieving Sanitation at Scale, and the supporting background report, available from www.Lboro.ac.uk/well

Other sanitation partnerships between civil society and local government are being replicated:

• the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) approach in Pakistan entails NGOs working with communities and local government to provide low cost sewerage using a component sharing approach.

• widespread public toilet provision has been achieved by the NGO Sulabh International in India, who are given long term concessions to construct and manage public toilet blocks.

Good partnerships allocate responsibilities and risks to the stakeholders best able to manage them.

Contracting Out

As decentralization gives greater responsibility to local government for the provision of basic services, it is increasing looking to NSPs to support capacity gaps. Services can be contracted-out to local private operators, while government retains an overall regulatory role. An external agency (such as a donor) may provide initial funds and/ or technical assistance to help establish management and legal frameworks, but as local government builds capacity to manage and regulate, this can be reduced.

The separation of operational and regulatory roles offers users a better quality of service, provided the regulator has sufficient capacity to promote more equitable services for poorer customers.

Experience in the management arrangement of public toilet blocks in the Mumbai Slum Sanitation Programme, India has seen greater flexibility of services at less risk to the local authority, compared with their own staff managing facilities. This is described in more detail in WELL Briefing Note 18: Achieving Sanitation at Scale ( www.Lboro.ac.uk/well ).

Problems experienced with contracting out toilet block management, such as the ‘politics of patronage’ in urban local government, have led to poor contract management and conflicts in cities such as Kumasi in Ghana. Where toilet blocks for slums are to be located on private land, efforts are required to improve local accountability and transparency to address such issues.

Creating an Environment for Better Engagement

Governments typically take the lead in creating the institutional environment within which state and non-state actors operate. They can hinder progress, or seek to create a favourable environment in which greater levels of engagement with sanitation NSPs improve sanitation services to the, as yet, unserved. This institutional environment can support government engagement with NSPs through:

• low level engagement, such as formal recognition of NSPs;

• medium-level engagement, such as registration, creative ways for collaboration, developing opportunities for dialogue and policy engagement, or short term contracts;

and

• high-level engagement, including appropriate longer term contractual relationships and regulation

Many governments only achieve low levels of engagement with NSPs. Such governments can be encouraged to progress from simple ‘non-interference’ – allowing NSPs to carry out “acceptable” activities – to formally recognizing the role that NSPs play in providing essential sanitation services (such as pit emptying, de-sludging septic tanks, or operating public latrines), as a vital first stage of engagement.

• Manual pit emptiers operating in Kibera informal settlement, Kenya are generally ignored by the local authority, which limits improvement in the services they provide and the conditions they work in. In contrast, recognition offered by the municipality to providers of similar services in townships around Durban, South Africa developed a partnership to enable the municipality to meet its obligation of providing sanitation services to the poor, while enhancing the status and prospects of those service providers.

As governments gain experience, build confidence and develop relationships with NSPs, they can explore higher levels of engagement that still carry relatively low risks, such as through forms of NSP registration and enabling NSPs to contribute to national and local dialogue forums.

• In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, registered masons trained in latrine construction are supporting neighbouring communities. This is allowing the growing demand for sanitation to be matched with an adequate supply of support – essential to scaling-up sanitation services.

• In Bangladesh and Lesotho, collaboration between government, NSPs and external agencies has achieved significant growth in rural sanitation  provision. Government focuses its support on increasing demand for sanitation through social mobilization, hygiene promotion and training. Local artisans, trained with the external agency support, assist communities to meet demand by constructing latrines and supplying component parts.

• Few national forums exist to enable direct dialogue between sanitation NSPs and government. Dialogue more typically takes place through umbrella organizations, such as the Mvula Trust in South Africa and the NGO Forum in Bangladesh. These have the capacity and continuity through which the voice of NSPs can be channelled to higher levels of decision-making.  Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) engaging directly with government is challenging, especially where government is threatened by a vocal civil society.  Opportunities to develop dialogue and build mutual trust, through intermediaries, can be explored.

Where local governments are the owners of sanitation assets, such as sewers or public toilet blocks, they are likely to regulate minimum service quality levels and perhaps limit consumer charges.  Where such facilities are managed by CBOs, supportive forms of regulation are appropriate, such as developing capacity for better management, while promoting minimum levels of services and publicizing the range of prices being charged.

• In El Alto, Bolivia, a partnership between the regulator, CSOs and service provider, with external facilitation, agreed to install a form of sanitation (condominal sewers) that meets minimum service levels, while being acceptable for the local population to adopt.  The agreement also brought about a change in the national standards, to recognise this service level.

Incentives and Disincentives for Engaging with NSPs

There are both incentives and disincentives for government to engage with NSPs operating in the sanitation sector.  Outlined in Table 1, these need to be borne in mind as programmes are developed.

Table 1: Disincentives and matching incentives for government engagement

Key Lessons

Formal recognition is the first step

Where government has the intention of addressing sanitation needs, it can begin by simply recognizing the role played by the private providers as a fundamental first step in the process of engagement. Recognition requires little investment and does not entail a great deal of risk, while there are immediate benefits in increasing the reputation of the providers within society and potentially the level of services they provide.  

No 'off-the-shelf' solution

Once governments decide to move into more formal means of engagement with NSPs, there is no blue-print approach to how this should be done. Various levels and forms of engagement have been used to support improved services, which can be adapted to suit a specific operating environment. Incremental engagement allows parties to enter into increasingly formal and enterprising roles and relationships as experience, trust and capacity are built.

Neither governments, nor NSPs, can achieve sanitation provision at scale without the  support of the other. While NSPs may have the flexibility to respond to demand for current services and the skills of social mobilization, local government is often better placed to ensure long-term support, monitoring and market friendly regulation associated with those services. The institutional model that is proving most effective for at-scale provision is one involving a partnering of local government and local NSPs