On October 2, 2018, USAID IUWASH PLUS conducted a meeting with the Bogor City Secretary, Ade Syarif Hidayat, to advocate the city government to support sanitation marketing as an effort to improve the people’s access to safely-managed sanitation.
This meeting was also attended by representatives from Bogor City Bappeda, UPTD PAL, Public Relations Division of Bogor city government, and Diskominfostandi (Communication, Informatics, Statistics, and Coding Office).
Based on Bogor City Health Office data (2017), about 33% of the total 1,064 million of Bogor population do not have access to sanitation.
The Regional Manager of USAID IUWASH PLUS WJDT for (West Java, DKI Jakarta, and Tangerang) areas, Wouter Sahanaya, said that the very poor community members need the government’s help to build sanitation facilities, through either sanitation grant or CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) program, indeed. Yet, there are productive poor people who are actually able to build sanitation facilities and need our help to access sanitation micro-finance.
Sanitation marketing helps the productive poor community members to access sanitation loan from microfinance institutions and sanitation products from sanitation entrepreneurs. From March to September 2018, seven people from six villages, namely Cikaret, Mekarjaya, Tanah Baru, Cibogir, Muarasari, and Pasir Kuda, have received sanitation loan from BAIK Cooperative to build toilets.
Yet, the sanitation marketing implementation is still limited. USAID IUWASH PLUS presented challenges in sanitation marketing including (1) limited information on sanitation financing scheme, (2) sanitation is not perceived as a profitable business, (3) community members still assume that the government will build the sanitation facilities, and (4) the government sanitation grant programs are not on-target, and (5) there is no single organization managing sanitation data.
Learned from this presentation, Ade is committed to support sanitation marketing in Bogor city.
“Bogor city government welcomes and is ready to support the sanitation marketing program. I will encourage all OPDs (Local Government Working Units) to implement the program. The government would like to see the sanitation marketing pilot program is successful in Bogor city,” said Ade.
Ade will assign Diskominfostandi to collect and manage the sanitation data. He will also coordinate all relevant such as the Public Works and Spatial Planning Office, the Health Office, and Environment Office to support the sanitation marketing.
After this meeting, the USAID IUWASH PLUS project will assist the city government to draft he Mayor Regulation on Sanitation Marketing Strategy and to review desludging tariff for communal sanitation facilities and low-income communities, government, and firms to support safely-managed sanitation.
The project will also assist microfinance institutions to identify its market segments for sanitation loan. Further, it will support the relevant OPDs to promote sanitation marketing.
