Malang city government aims to implement safely managed sanitation. To achieve this goal, the city government established UPTD PALD under the city public works and spatial planning (PUTR) office in January 2018 to manage any activities and facilities related to domestic wastewater management, such as desludging services and septage treatment plant.
In addition to establishing UPTD PALD, the city government also built a new septage treatment plant with capacity of 45m3/day in 2018 because the old septage treatment plant is no longer functioning optimally.
With all of these endeavors, the UPTD PALD expects to deliver desludging services to all houses in Malang city. However, what has been achieved seems to be far from the target. As of February 2019, the UPTD only served 2,493 of the total 215,200 houses in the city.
In order to expand the service coverage, UPTD PALD, with support from USAID IUWASH PLUS, engaged private operators in desludging services. In this case, USAID IUWASH PLUS assisted the UPTD PALD to have a series of discussions with the private desludging service operators on safely managed sanitation, including its benefits to humans, the environment and supporting regulations, as well as customer database management from January 2019.
Through this discussion, the operators also learned that Malang city has a Local Government Regulation No 2/2017 that obliges all desludging operators to dispose of and treat the sludge in the septage treatment plant.
These discussions resulted in a cooperation agreement between the UPTD PALD and 11 private desludging service operators, which was signed by the Head of the UPTD PALD and the representatives from the 11 private desludging service operators during a signing ceremony on March 6, 2019 in Malang city.
This cooperation agreement will allow the private operators to receive customers from the UPTD PALD. In supporting the cooperation, UPTD PALD, with assistance from USAID IUWASH PLUS, will develop a customer database, promote desludging service to the wider community, as well as train and strengthen the call center operators on customer care skills. The project also assisted UPTD PALD to develop SOP on customer care in April 2019. The cooperation with private desludging service operators also contributes to the increase of desludging service customers. As of June 2019, the UPTD PALD served 3,503 houses.
“Private desludging operators have long been operating in Malang city and have served thousands customers. Thus, it is necessary for UPTD PALD to establish a partnership with them to ensure that they meet environmental health and safety requirements when delivering their services, including disposing of the septage in the septage treatment plant,” said Ari Kuswandari Yushinta, the Head of UPTD PALD in Malang city.
“Being a partner of UPTD PALD, I hope we can serve more customers in the future. UPTD PALD will also provide trainings for the operators to increase our service quality,” said Johan Setiawan from CV Prayogo, the representative of the private desludging service operator.
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