continuous water supply is an exception rather than a norm in most cities.
This publication looks at the key success factors that other utilities are taking note of: the zonal approach to rehabilitating and managing urban water services, trenchless technology for expeditiously laying pipes, the importance of community mobilization, and connecting the urban poor—and keeping them connected—through community-managed approaches. ADB invested $212.7 million in the Dhaka Water Supply Sector Development Program to bring reforms to Bangladesh’s urban water services sector, build capacity of Dhaka’s water utility, and to reach out to the poor and slums. ADB’s investment was critical part of a multi-donor partnership to bring investments to the entire urban water sector in Bangladesh.
The situation before the project was clearly suboptimal: lack of surface water had led to unsustainable reliance on groundwater; the city did not have the infrastructure to deliver clean or 24x7 water supply nor could it do that with high water losses and the proliferation of suction pumps that the public had resorted to using as a coping mechanism. The ADB investment supported the “district metering area approach,” which divided the city into zones with independent systems that could manage flow and pressure, and control nonrevenue water or water losses. This approach expedited the rehabilitation of the entire city and was supported by trenchless technology—horizontal drilling machines that drive water pipes into the ground without having to dig the trenches that disrupt traffic, interrupt water supplies, and involve expensive road restoration or relocation of and compensation to the affected persons. The project also demonstrated that the urban poor are a viable market and one that should be taken seriously. Dhaka’s sprawling slums have been substantially benefitted under the project.
Like any ambitious investment in a city of the developing world, the Dhaka Water Supply Sector Development Program was not without its challenges. Determined leadership was the key to keeping stakeholders engaged and committed to the new ideas and approaches being tried by the program. This publication is full of voices that attest to the struggle they faced and overcame, and the impact that reliable water supply has made on people’s health, happiness, and prosperity. Because of the project, a generation of children in Dhaka’s slums is the first to experience clean water available just outside their doorsteps. Their communities are being transformed by the power of water—shanties are being reinforced with concrete walls, pathways are being paved with drainage, and businesses are thriving. The poor have not been left behind and are benefiting exponentially more, which is what good development strives for and has accomplished here.
We congratulate our DWASA colleagues and counterparts in the Government of Bangladesh on their accomplishments on this project and wish them similar success on the subsequent projects.
Hun Kim
Director General
South Asia Regional Department
Asian Development Bank
THE DHAKA TURNAROUND STORY
A Shining Example of South–South Learning
Since 2007, Dhaka’s water utility has been turning around its water services without leaving the poor behind. By creating closed hydrologic systems to break the megacity down into more serviceable and manageable zones, otherwise called “district metered areas (DMAs),” the utility has swiftly rehabilitated networks and connections, is now able to detect and reduce leaks, and delivers pressurized, clean water 24 hours a day to everyone, including the poor. The utility’s top management has also adroitly pushed through sensitive but essential reforms, and tested and validated its assumptions about the technical as well as financial viability of connecting slums. The Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWASA) has thus become South Asia’s replicable model of an inclusive, enterprising, and commercially viable urban service utility.
A major reason for DWASA’s turnaround has been the $212.7 million Asian Development Bank (ADB)–financed Dhaka Water Supply Sector Development Program (DWSSDP), under a multi-donor partnership for the entire urban water sector in Bangladesh. The partnership combines sweeping yet pragmatic and phased reforms, innovative technology and management approaches, and a determination to connect slum areas.
What factors made DWASA’s turnaround possible? How did the utility navigate laws, policy, inertia, prejudice, and accustomed practice to get a megacity and its mega slums connected? More importantly, is DWASA’s success sustainable?
Cities across South Asia have begun turning to DWASA to learn about its technology and tactics, and replication is under way. “This is South–South learning at its best,” says Manoj Sharma, the ADB project manager who worked with DWASA for 6 years through its least hopeful to its shining moments. The multilateral development banks, including ADB, are also learning that investments in water distribution networks, and not only in bulk water supply, provide surety that the investments do not just speak for the poor but deliver the benefits of development dollars directly to them. Rather than simply pushing a loan condition, ADB took a more direct and proactive role in connecting urban poor households in Dhaka. Project designers cannot assume that networks will be extended to the poor. Design must be deliberate—not just “pro-poor” but for-the-poor design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
Through the DWSSDP and a unique collaborative landscape of development partners working to support DWASA’s turnaround, DWASA is demonstrating how utilities can become government standard-bearers, both financially and in service to the public. Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) are finding their optimal role as facilitators rather than the small-scale development contractors that many have become, and the poor are proving to be a financially viable market that can also deliver their own development when basic social services are accessible. Once connected, communities invest in more durable housing, community assets, and sanitary environments. Pathways are paved; household and community toilets are built and maintained. Water inspires work. It encourages investments and construction, and sparks community pride.
Political and management commitment to connect the poor also begets new technical and management approaches. Legal work-arounds can sidestep prohibitions on connecting residents without land titles. Technical solutions can master even the most challenging urban terrain. Slums can, and must be, connected. To exclude them, to build systems exclusively for the politically, technically, and financially low-risk customer, incites the poor to rationalized theft to correct social injustice and inequality, causing its own set of technical and financial problems for utilities and privileged customers. Illegal connections—and in Dhaka’s case, the proliferation of suction pumps—can compromise the pressure and quality of water and its availability to all, and impair the performance of the larger system. Investing in systems for the poor is investing in systems for everyone.
The question for utilities is not why 24-hour water supply should be provided or why the poor should be connected. The advantages of 24-hour water supply compared with intermittent water supply are acknowledged by most top-level managers, who also know that access to clean drinking water and sanitation is a basic, universally declared human right.1 The question, rather, is how these seemingly formidable challenges can be surmounted, and everyone, including the poor, assured of 24-hour water supply, without exposing the utility (or its management) to political targeting or to further technical and financial strain. Taking such an obligation seriously is another matter, but one that concerns the most successful utilities as it has DWASA.
This publication tells Dhaka’s success story. It narrates how a nearly bankrupt, dysfunctional utility became one of South Asia’s leading public utilities, and how ADB and other partners helped make the turnaround possible, by daring to engage in development differently.
