Swachh Maharashtra Mission - Technical support to the State Government of Maharashtra on urban sanitation and FSSM

CWAS has been supporting the implementation of the Swachh Maharashtra Mission (Urban) since 2015. This was instrumental in making all cities in Maharashtra ODF in 2017. With this, the Government of Maharashtra launched a sustainability charter for ODF and embarked on the next stage of making all cities ODF+ and ODF++ under Swachh Bharat mission frameworks with faecal sludge and septage management (FSSM).  Under this project funded by BMGF in 2019, CWAS aims to provide continued support to mission through a “technical support unit” (TSU).

The TSU has facilitated the development of a state FSSM strategy for ensuring safe treatment and disposal of faecal waste in all 400 cities and is actively providing implementation and extensive capacity-building support for the same. This includes planning, design, scale-up and monitoring of co-treatment and independent FSTPs across the state. 70+ cities are practicing co-treatment, and 200+ FSTPs are functional. The next set of activities in the state deals with scaling up scheduled desludging and gender mainstreaming in sanitation across the state based on examples of Wai and Sinnar.

The team also provides regular support to the Swachh Maharashtra Mission to facilitate ODF/ODF+/ ODF++ certifications and capacity building for the annual Swachh Sarvekshan.