Bhubaneswar: A delegation from Odisha comprising five senior officials from the Housing & Urban Development Department and representatives from Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) Technical Support Unit (TSU) participated in the 21st International Congress of the African Water Association and the 7th International FSM Conference held at Abidjan in Ivory Coast from 19th to 23rd February.
The delegates participated in multiple sessions and shared their experience, learnings and best practices in implementing various interventions across the FSM value chain in Odisha. The State’s initiatives in decentralised, community-led sanitation with innovative and inclusive interventions for the empowerment of women and transgender groups and sanitation workers were particularly appreciated by the international delegates.
Kalyan Kumar Rath, Special Secretary, P K Mohapatra, Engineer-in-Chief of Odisha Water Supply & Sewerage Board (OWSSB), Durgesh Nandini Sahoo, Additional Secretary, Suryabarti Majhi, Project Engineer, OWSSB and Rashmita Mishra, Municipal Engineer of Dhenkanal Municipality were among the delegation from Odisha who participated in the technical sessions and also as panellists in other sessions.
In the technical sessions, Rath and Sahoo presented Odisha’s transformational journey From Sewer to FSM to City Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) and the Empowerment of the marginalized transgender community through a community-led livelihood model in sanitation respectively.
The International FSM Conference is a platform held biennially to share best practices and innovations to improve FSM and to expand service to all people lacking access to safely managed sanitation. It provides the opportunity for sector professionals, governments, policy-makers, utilities, development partners, investors, industries and service providers to coordinate, develop and share learning to provide affordable and workable solutions at scale.
