 Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar, Sanit action, understanding comparison regulation challenges. Welcome to everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. This webinar is a collaboration between international water association and water links. My name is secret. I'm senior project officer diversity inclusion and equality at international water association and I will be moderating this webinar today. I'm going to go through some housekeeping rules before we kick in with presentations. Just going to take a few minutes. Some webinar information. This webinar will be recorded and made made available on demand on the IWA website with presentation slides and other information. The speakers are responsible for securing copyright permissions for any work that they will present of which they are not the legal copyright holders. And all the opinions, hypothesis conclusions or recommendations contained in the presentation and other materials are so responsibilities of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect IWA opinion. We have chat box on on zoom. Please use this for general questions and for interactive activities. And also we have Q&A box. This one please use for to send your question to the panelists. We will answer this during the discussion either in writing or in the end there will be a Q&A session. Please note that the raise hand option is not going to be used in this webinar so do not use it because we're not going to take it into consideration. We're going to start with a poll. We would like to introduce the poll and ask you where are you joining from. Please do let us know so we know the demographics of our audience. We have the results so we have quite a few participants from Europe. I think that's the largest percent, 31% participants from Europe, 26% from Africa, South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific both have 20% each participation in North America. We have 3% which is understandable because of the time zone. I'd like to introduce our panelists today. We have my floor from Water League Suresh Ruhila from International Water Association Abdullah Al-Mahyit from SEWIS, FSM support cell and Patrick T. Regulatory Office, the Philippines. Our agenda today is on the screen. That's going to be the order that the presentations will go on. And now I would like to present our first speaker Suresh Kumar Ruhila. Suresh Ruhila is a program lead at the International Water Association on the initiative inclusive urban sanitation based in London. He has long been an advocate for promoting sustainable sanitation, water sensitive design and planning and decentralized water waste management for environmental sustainability in global south cities. I'd like to ask you to join me in welcoming Suresh. The floor is yours Suresh. Thanks Sikha. Good morning to all participants and good afternoon and evening wherever you are joining and it is my pleasure today to present the at the first webinar of the inclusive urban sanitation initiative of IWA and I would be presenting here. Some results and lessons learned from a global consultation that IWA had initiated as a part of a smaller project before we started this initiative last year. So today we see that citywide inclusive sanitation approach is recognized by key international players as the way forward for achieving the sustainable development goals 6.2. And citywide inclusive sanitation is defined as a public service approach to planning and implementing urban sanitation systems for achieving outcomes summarized in sustainable development goals 6. Which is safe, sustainable and sanitation for all irrespective of where people live within the city or what technologies are used to serve them. The regulating citywide inclusive sanitation initiative was a global consultation and how the project was developed is a collaboration of partners, namely representatives from regulators and organizations across the globe. And we had set up an advisory board and task force to help us do this global consultation and this document findings which I'm sharing is available for download on IW website. And we had in the process of global consultation reached out to, you know, operator regulators from different countries. Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Senegal, and Zambia, which were starting the sea wise transition, and then several countries like Brazil, Argentina, Philippine, where they were ensuring that citywide inclusive sanitation works. And then some cities and countries which reported that they are towards the last leg of citywide inclusive sanitation journey is Chile, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Brazil, you know, Columbia. So these were in the global, these they were part of the global consultation, and I would like to share the key lessons which came out of this consultation. The consultation was over a year and it came out that safeguarding safe service provision to all requires a review of utility and regulator mandates, especially in the fast growing settlements, and data is very essential for utilities for their operating and planning. This is an expensive venture and therefore government should provide an incentivize for data collection and documentation. And another thing important highlighted in the consultation was that gradual and incremental regulatory measures are visible, then taking very bold moves. And there is a need, need for rethinking the role of regulator. There have been dynamic changes over the years and the citywide inclusive sanitation approach requires further shifts in the role of regulator and regulators also require to have sufficient independence and always necessarily being aware of the socio economic and the political context, because what happens is as this context evolves reassessment is needed for better regulations to serve the people. And citywide inclusive sanitation is something which is not just for low and medium income countries of global south, but it is required in all the context, not just, you know, poor countries or low income countries. And this was also coming out another important element which came out from the consultation was that citywide inclusive sanitation as cross cutting linkages with housing drainage and solid waste. This was one of the key learnings that regulators felt that this is interconnected and interlinked context, other thing which came out in terms of role and responsibilities in the lessons learned what that sanitation is an integral element of integrated urban water management, and it is the first step to long term goal of integrated urban water management. And there is a need to adjust the license of public water and separate service provider. Now I would like to talk about the initiative which has developed or as over the, you know, global consultation is the inclusive urban sanitation initiative of IWA. We have organized the series of webinars and this is the first webinar in that series in partnership with water links. And as a part of this initiative, we are trying to reshape the global urban sanitation agenda by focusing on inclusive sanitation service goals and the service systems required to achieve them. And we are just not going to be talking about the technology, but we are going to be talking about inclusivity we are talking about diversity equity aspects, and focus is not just on expanding sewer networks and treatment works, but it is a holistic city-wide inclusive sanitation. We would be engaging further now, public, private and academic sector under this initiative. And we would be defining the goals and fundamentals of public sector approach to service outcomes. And this initiative is being progressed through the Sanit Action Campaign, the name given for amplifying the agenda for inclusive urban sanitation and IWA's global call for action on the inclusive urban sanitation. We would be using different channels of IWA to promote this initiative. We would be coming out with series of white papers and position papers. We would be having series of webinars, MOOCs and learning sessions, blogs and stories to capture the experiences from different geographies and socio-economic contexts. We would be also launching a special edition of a conference, Innovation Acceleration Conference at the IWA World Water World Congress, which will be held in Kigali in the 2023. And there will be some innovation awards for the kind of work which we have done by different players involved in promoting inclusive urban sanitation. More details about this initiative can be found at IWA website and there is a barcode here. You can scan and visit our IWA website. And I would stop here. Thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you very much, Suresh, for providing this comprehensive overview and informative lessons learned. Thank you. I would like to present our next speaker, who is my floor. She holds a degree in low-end economics from the University of the Philippines and over 30 years of work experience in the urban water supply and sanitation sector, having worked for government, private enterprises and international development institutions. She is currently the Executive Director of Water Links. Welcome. Thank you, Sikia. I wanted to congratulate IWA at the onset for a fantastic initiative. I think it is very timely and it is really needed. So that's great work that you guys are doing there. Water Links is, of course, quite honored to be a part of the initiative. And thank you to IWA for inviting us to this session. Water Links is a non-profit organization that is based in the Philippines and we've been working a lot with water and sanitation utilities through capacitating programs, primarily with which I'm presenting on within our expertise. Because we have seen how water and sanitation utilities have operated well and in some cases not operated well and we feel that regulation really can assist in helping utilities ensure better services for their customers. We are working in three countries, essentially Bangladesh, India and Nepal, which are in various stages of reform in regulatory reform in the water and sanitation sector. We are currently looking at what has been done, why they want regulation, understanding what the challenges that they are facing and what they feel regulation can do for it in addressing that challenge or those challenges. And of course coming up with a feasible solution because we all know that one size does not fit all. While models from Africa, Manila in the Philippines and Malaysia will be introduced, we have already, we already know that we cannot simply copy any of these models, because obviously the situation on the ground in these countries are very different. So just to give you a bit of a background as to the structure of who are the players in terms of service providers in these countries. So in Bangladesh, you have, if you can take a look at the gray, the gray bits. You basically have different types of service providers. You've got the Department of Public. So trying to help the actual service providers, particularly the city corporations and the Purashavas. So DPHE and LGED typically would develop the treatment plants and turn these over to these entities, the city corporations and Purashavas and also on the rural side for their operations. Then you've got in the middle box, you've got the larger service providers in the cities, in the larger cities of Dhaka, Chittagong, Kulna and Rajshahi. And these are what they call WASTAs or Autonomous Entities, Water and Sanitation Authorities and they basically provide services for both water and sewerage. And this is where I take a point from Suresh's presentation when he says that there is a need to adjust the responsibilities of utilities to cover sanitation for all. Just in the case of Bangladesh, for instance, the issue of septage management and fecal sludge management or FSM does not fall onto the service providers. It doesn't fall onto the WASTA. It falls onto the local governments. So the city governments, the Purashavas and the like. And this is a bit of an issue, particular to the cities where WASTAs exist, because then there seems to be a gray bit as to who is in charge of that particular one. In Orissa, it's a little bit more straightforward. You've got two entities that are essentially providing water and separately sanitation services. Water is being provided by a newly corporatized entity, wholly public owned, 100% by the government. It's called Watco or the water company. And it covers 28 cities or cities and municipalities throughout the state of Odisha in India. And they provide primarily water supply. And on the sanitation side, the services on sanitation is being delivered by the OWSSB or the Odisha Water Supply and Sanitation Board. Orissa Water Supply and Sewerage Board. But you will see that OWSSB essentially provides the capex. So they develop all of these treatment plants, and then they hand it over to the to the municipality or the urban local bodies. OWSSB is the municipality, which in turn transfers the operations of these treatment plants to SHGs or self health groups. In some cases, they also transfer it to Watco and PHEO. PHEO would be the public health engineering office for operations, but you will note that Watco only operates sewerage. All of FSM still falls within the municipality and thereafter turned over to self health groups to operate, but reporting to the municipality. And in Nepal, it's a little bit more complex. Please take a look at the green bits. You will see on the left side, the first green bit is KUKL, which is the utility that is providing water and sanitation services to Kathmandu Valley. And then the second green box is the Nepal Water Supply Corporation, which provides water supply water supply, sorry, these two green boxes are only providing water services. So KUKL and Nepal Water Supply are both providing water services. In the case of Kathmandu, of KUKL, it's operating only in Kathmandu Valley. In the case of Nepal Water Supply Corporation, you will take a look at the line, the black line down. It covers 22 municipalities, including the larger cities of Pokhara and outside of Kathmandu Valley. And sanitation, however, is being provided by local governments. Once again, you will see the next three green lines and the blue lines above it. These are government, essentially, municipalities and city offices. These countries are in various stages of reform in Bangladesh, which was before this project of that supported by Bill Gates began in 2022. It was ahead of the pack in a sense because as early as 2015, the ADB, the Asian Development Bank, had developed a had provided technical assistance to help the country understand regulation better and they agreed then at that point to develop a water regulatory commission or a WRC. This was way back in 2015. However, from that time, the status of the WRC is unclear. It never really took off. So there was not much discussion after the draft bills were made. So recently ADB has approached again Bangladesh to try to revive this discussion in trying to reestablish or go back and review the need for a regulator through either a regulatory commission or what have you. And we feel that we should be working alongside ADB in trying to push for this particular reform. So Water Links and UNICEF, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working together with ADB alongside ADB in trying to assist Bangladesh, develop some regulatory arrangements for the sector. But in parallel, we understand that nationally it's very difficult. And again, I look back to what Suresh said that having bold moves might be more difficult than having incremental baby steps. In which case we are also exploring what can be done particular to FSM, regulating FSM in cities. In Orissa, that state has really done excellent work. We think that the government is very forward thinking. They have some innovative programs. It is the only state in India that has a 24 by 7 water supply in several cities. At the moment, they have covered the drink from tap program has covered 100% coverage now in the capital cities of Bobaneswar, Katak, and Behrampur. And they are covering 350,000 people with 24 by 7 water supply. They have on the sanitation side adopted a decentralized and non sewered community led fecal sludge and septage management program that has that can really be scaled up very quickly. And sewerage they have decided is only limited to the larger cities like the capital city of Bobaneswar. As mentioned, it's also the only state in India to have provided every urban center a septage treatment plant. Over the last few years they have established and built 108 fully functioning STPs across 107 cities in the state. And eight more will be completed by March of this year covering all urban cities, 114 of them. And now government is now thinking of establishing a statewide regulator to ensure the gains that they have achieved will be sustained. And this is also where Water Links has been requested to support again through the Gates Foundation. We are working also with the Center for Policy Research of India in this state to get this going. In Nepal, this is now the, I would say at this point, they are ahead of the pack now, because in October of 2022, they passed a law, the Water and Sanitation Act, which created the water, not water, sorry, the tariff fixation commission. And that is now what we are doing with them is to support them to draft laws or regulations, not laws, but regulations to affect that law. And we are hoping that within this year that will be completed and a fully functioning regulator will be in place by the end of the year. So prospects for regulation, as mentioned, maybe baby steps for Bangladesh at this point, looking at working with the city corporations both Dhaka South and Dhaka North to try to craft regulation and arrangements that can address FSM challenges. And we are also looking at, these are already existing, citizens' charters are already existing, which are annual contracts between city corporations and the government. And we are exploring the possibility of maybe not creating a fully new regulator but working within the ambit of the citizens' charter and coming up with provisions for, stricter provisions for targets and performance based services over a fixed period of maybe every three years or every five years. We would also like to work with the largest utility in Bangladesh, it's the Dhaka Wasa, to elaborate the annual performance agreement. Again, this is the contract between the Water Utility Dhaka Wasa with the government and its constituents to try to use this as a platform for regulation. And again, and as a third, so you've got Dhaka Wasa as the utility, also Dhaka South, Dhaka North for FSM and then also looking at a Purashava, one Purashava we have yet to choose to pilot regulatory arrangements there along the lines of the citizens' charter of the city corporations. In Orissa, like I said, the government is very clear, they want a statewide regulator and so we are now organizing visits for them to both Malaysia and Philippines and understanding what works and that will hopefully help them craft the regulations that will affect the Water Utility and Sanitation Act that has been passed in October of 2022. Sorry, that's Nepal, my mistake. Orissa is simply to develop regulation and government has really wanting to do it so they are also committed to establish a regulator by the end of the year. And Nepal as well by the end of the year to develop regulation to support the act that has been passed. So both Nepal and Orissa are scheduled to visit Philippines and Malaysia, Nepal very soon by February of 2023. In fact, February 22 they will be in Malaysia and February 27 they will be in Manila. Orissa would be scheduled sometime in April or May and as you will see there hopefully within this year we will have draft regulations and a framework to affect a fully functioning regulator. In Bangladesh, we're taking it a little bit slower, we're going to meet with the Dhaka North Corporation in March. Sorry, that has been changed from February to March to try to see what can be done for FSM specifically and also to discuss with one smaller city or a Purashava to see what can be done along the same lines on FSM. So there are also things that we are looking at on the activities for the three project areas that are common. We're thinking of a regulatory conference, maybe after the countries have visited Manila and Malaysia. We're looking at working with the East Africa, East and Southern Africa Water Regulators Association. So that's called Isawas and Isawas is a very interesting entity from Africa. Those of you who are from Africa know them very well. There are 10 member regulators in Isawas and they have a very, very rich experience in crafting regulation, what worked, what didn't work. We're hoping to also learn from their experience. From all of these, what we have seen in discussing with the various regulators that are existing, very few, but still there are, they exist in, at least in Asia. Purash also mentioned this in his presentation, independence is key. You need to have an independent and autonomous regulator. You will hear from my colleague Patrick T. later to explain how that very point is important. It has to have a clear mandate to be effective. Of course, it has to be staffed by competent and well trained personnel. And this is really one of the challenges you may have the best regulator organized but if the staff are not properly trained or not the right fit in terms of experience and expertise, then it will also not work. Utilities should also have clear targets that they need to achieve over time and we feel that this is really the only way for utilities to ensure the delivery of services continuously and reaching 100% over time. Tariffs as well a very important point to regulation, it must be linked to service standards and performance and it cannot simply be in a vacuum that you get a tariff from the air, it must be linked to some form of service standard. A system of incentives and penalties is also important for operators to be mindful of what their responsibilities are. And of course, since consumers are at the center of regulation, then the tariffs need to be affordable, but without sacrificing the quality of the services. That too is quite interesting because for instance in the state of Odisha, they've already stated that we don't need to have full cost recovery but the state is willing to have some form of gap funding or subsidy to try to meet the gap between what is affordable and what is needed. And of course finally a process for filing complaints and dispute resolution should also be included in the whole structure of regulation. With that I add my presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you Mai for the great presentation, very insightful and great overview of the region. Before I go to the next panelist, I would like to remind our participants that they can place their questions to the panelist in the Q&A box. Our next panelist is Dr Abdul Al-Mu'id. He's a development wash professional who has worked for more than 15 years with experience developing and managing large scale environmental and water sanitation programs and project targeting poor and vulnerable population in urban and rural parts of Bangladesh. He's working as chief operating officer of the SEWIS FSM support cell of the Department of Public Health Engineering. He has altered four textbooks, more than 100 peer reviewed papers and reports on environmental engaging. Welcome. Thank you, Sikia, for introducing me. I hope you can hear me loud, right? We can hear you well. Excellent. Okay, thank you so much. So good evening and good afternoon and of course the good morning, some of the places where you are. So this is the Mu'id, they call me Mu'id, how all the friends call me. And today I'm going to present how the government leadership has been enacted towards the journey of SDG 6.2. Just to inform you that, I mean, we all the wash professionals usually do the advocacy from the outside of the government. We always say that the government needs to do that. They need to follow that. They have to do these things. But today's journey is the after that, the implementation of the advocacy and welcome to the journey of the SEWIS FSM support center and how we are implementing the advocacy in the government to lead the SDG 6.2 journey. So I take an adaptation of the story, the turtle story here, you all know that story, a little bit of twisted here there is no rabbit here so there is no race with other one is the only standalone turtle story here. And if I recall the story that's a journey, we started long before the MDG period. And at the end of the MDG period, we were so happy, so happy that the journey to zero we also celebrated at that time that we achieved the open defecation C status country at the end of MDG period, except splendid success for the country. And however, we were a little bit of relaxed like the turtle is having the ice cream, the delicious ice cream I wish I have it now. The journey needs to continue after the MDG period and during that SDG period, how we are going to, you know, having our journey is a little bit of, you know, particular situations that turtle is very much tired. One of the major reason is the SDG understanding it takes a long time for us to understand and to comprehend properly the terminology, the world that talks, how we were going to proceed, how we are going to put our footsteps to reach the 2030 journey so tired turtle is, you know, they are during that journey. And if we look at in the 2015 GMB data rural and urban sanitation in both cases, if you see that I mean the safely managed sanitation in the rural case is the 34% and for the urban case it was 42%. And in the case, you know, of 2015 end of MDG period, as I mentioned, we already, you know, eradicated the open defecation. And we also understood at the time that the shared toilet with the reality of this country, which is again a different terminology in the lanes of SDG. And at the end of few years, if we consider that, like urban sanitation, when we see that in 2021, sorry, this was the 15 data and here the 21 data, I mean, 2021 data. According to the GMB 2021. So this is something it's very interesting. For the last, you know, five to seven years. There was no increase of the open defecation and during that SDG period, this is a splendid achievement of the government of Bangladesh to keep it at a static level. And this is not an open defecation free status till now this is a success, but this is not enough for reaching a country to reach the SDG target. So safely managed sanitation, how we cannot reach that. So shared toilet is a problem, but open defecation is not an accurate problem for this country during the SDG period. So how you're going to change the landscape in Bangladesh. Let's go back what our policy has mentioned we have the institutional regulatory framework, and it has the rural and urban framework there. And in the urban framework, we have the municipality or we say Polish about, we have 329 Polish or a synthetic corporation the small cities, we have the mega cities like the city as well and the bigger one, another bigger one is the chapter ground. So, considering that aspect, the 329 decentralized small country small, you know, units of the town, we have 329 small towns here in Bangladesh. So we have the focus how we are going to, you know, be in a decentralized way, we'll keep our journey for the SBB 6.2. And accordingly, we focused on the onsite sanitation, FSM, you know, focused onsite sanitation should be the way how we're going to reach the journey of safely managed sanitation in a quick way. And accordingly, our national action plan was developed in 2020, and the supply system supports and has been established in the government of under the local government division at the end of 2020, where our primary task is to leave this 329 municipalities also the rural areas for the safely managed sanitation journey. And we focus on different advocacies and at the beginning I mentioned that these are the things we need to do by the government now we are the responsible person agency to do it by the government. So we are the probably this is the only example. So far as I know, globally, the organization which is inside the government, but doing the advocacy within the government. And the other things which are very much critical for the journey of SDG 6.2 that capacity building demonstration and replication of technological innovation. We need to have the financial planning and influence IFI for the, you know, resourcing market for the innovation monitoring and evaluation and everything. So accordingly, we actually develop our strategy policy reform everything for the SDG journey. We, the policy regimes categorized all the 229 Poroshevas and have the plan, how we are going to move in the 2025, primarily then post 2025. But beside that, you know, the country is changing the economic status is changing now we are aspiring to become the not only the middle country maybe more than that, the GDP has income, you know, a couple of folks. So the rural transformation we need to keep in mind the rural areas is not the rural areas we found in the MDG period is the some transformative areas non Poroshevas or non municipal areas towns growth centers those are emerging sector where we need to consider but those are part of the rural area as well. So considering that aspect, the government has focused on very specific, my village, my town project. So this is where our twice episode support cell journey now, the how this turtle is moving during this SDG period. Of course, considering that aspect, you know, we, we, we need to have something to start something. We, we followed the CWI CTY inclusive sanitation approach and while the CTY inclusive annotation sanitation approach, the three pillars responsibility accountability resourcing these three we put it as a key priority as in that to be followed by the accountability responsibility by who the municipality accountability by who the municipality resourcing for the municipality. Now come to the point, if we don't put our emphasis on the resourcing the responsibility and accountability will not be performed well by the municipality so we need to go in parallel and very good emphasize strong advocacy requires for the considering that aspect. We are doing a stronger advocacy with the ISI, but the focus of all the journey is how we are going to reach 150 FSTP or towns in decentralized way in the next couple of years, how we are going to having the digital database and monitoring to monitor the progress of the SDG 6.2 and how we are going to give the urban facilities those sort of thing while doing so, we found a very critical contextual problems. We considered the FICUS management, this is a very interesting fact, but if you in Bangladesh, if you question to any municipal authorities, like which one is your critical problem because such are the solid waste. So the solid waste, the answer is the same one I still now receiving the same answer that if you consider the bar chart something like that the solid waste problem is much higher than the FICUS that problem. So this indicates that, again, the policy says that the responsibility for both the ways because the solid waste go to the municipal authority so we and the land is a critical issue in Bangladesh. We have decided to go for the integrated waste management that combines the FICUS and solid waste together. Of course, this is a major decision for the government and in order to do that the resource allocation that will be anticipated becomes manifold now. So that's why we want to develop under this so as deliverables and a lot of things definitely indicators and we are going to do that. I will share that in the next slide. And this sort of thing need to be, you know, accounted in the through the development of national wash account that is another endeavor we are anticipating that how much we are, you know, getting from the out of pocket expenditure in the sanitation and we want to capture as well also. Now, these are the problems but the thing is how we are going to solve that I'm not going to go one by one problem, but two things I would like to say here. One is the first of all, why when we say so I what is twice citywide inclusive sanitation the authority of course, didn't we do before so I mean for the last 10 years of course the city sanitation planning we did it together with the many of you. And those are the things actually systematically put in the source framework so that we can go in a step by step process. So, two steps, I found that very interesting for Bangladesh one way to understand the size and to develop the capacity of the SOI to the municipality to the government officials and other. So in order to do that we have developed a complete capacity building programs with the technical university it and what we say, and that becomes the one hand of the so I said and support they have been given the responsibility to develop the technical modules, and to do the training short of programs across the country, and we are doing it together with the municipal authorities and also the Department of Public Health Engineering this is number one, the robustness of the capacity building program the second one is how are you going to get data. So this is, if you go to the apart from the GMP data, you will not find any decentralized data for the individual city this is very important to give the data by the municipality that will reflect the accountability you know responsibility of the municipalities for which we already developed the National Sanitation Network all of you are requested after the webinar to visit www.standboard.gov.bd I wish I could show it to you live, but if you go there you will get there 64 municipalities data each of the city's data profile out there, but we're going to reach 329 municipalities within one next two years, hopefully, if everything goes well, so these two issues are very critical, while we are doing the stronger advocacy with the international finance institutions and the result is very promising. So far, within two years of our journey of the Swiss FSM support center throughout the advocacy with our development partner already actually 100 million USD has been invested so far, and just last week we have, you know, another very big project which estimated around 250 million USD which was also approved in our ethnic we say that the affects the body of our Prime Minister, and these are the outcome of the Swiss and these are all of the Swiss driven projects and within next two years, 1.5 billion dollar will be invested in country and in the BPHE as a Swiss driven project to have the integrated West management and to develop the Swiss, you know, Swiss deliverables. So this is the resource thing as I mentioned that the before the primary pillar of the Swiss framework is very much, you know, in progress. The progress here I would like to show if you go to the Susana so it's that you will get all the published SFD is there. I'm not going to details of there, but the city's profile are getting that this is the real scenario scenario decentralized way. So, you know the how we are going to convert this rate to green that is how we are going to put it so in the next three to four years of journey, and then in order to reach the 2030 target, the next three to years are very important the projects I have mentioned are very important the outcomes will actually govern the reaching of 2030 how the progress of the safety management of the situation. However, this sanitation dashboard that I mentioned, it is collaborated with our A to I, so that we will get that we will get the national, you know, recognition as well to have the national data so So this is how we are progressing now. The other one I already mentioned that that capacity building platform but we need to capture the good stories, particularly in my in the previous presentation and Dr. I also mentioned the particular focus on the West or how we, we shall, you know, keep the occupational health and safety safety how we have, you know, that's why mentoring city so that the other cities will follow that. We are learning from the existing mental cities in the country or, you know, within the country so that that can be escalated to 329 municipalities as well we are developing the different stories also and some of the stories are embedded in the link. I hope that you can read those stories after the, you know, the webinar also the links are already embedded there. And just before, you know, I'm just at the end of my presentation almost the whole objective of the Swiss FM support cell is to lead these, you know, is the G6 point to doing advocacy and having in mind the three pillars accountability responsibility and and this has been guided by our effects document, you know, planning document of the eighth five year plan, and under which guidance we are having the journey. And during that journey we found that the innovative technologies are very important as well. You know, say any word regarding technology will not be, you know, justified. So it's not only the, you know, bounded by the omniprocessor or gasifier or pyrolysis unit. I mean, the country like Bangladesh needs those technology but we need to be very careful as well to introduce, you know, that this sort of technology because of the high operation maintenance challenges are there. So, we are very careful to have the innovative technologies, but we are also optimistic that the small small, you know, occupied landed units of the technology will provide some good solution for the reaching the SDG 6.2. So market opportunities definitely very positive, but technologies emerging technologies contextual technologies as well is very important, and we are going to demonstrate a one omniprocessor in Bangladesh very soon. So the whole objective is to create this ecosystem is not a Swiss FM support cell, we cannot do work alone. So we are working together with our sector partners sector partners means all the sector actors like NGOs, NGOs, and their Swiss cities is becoming now channelizing in the government like projects and in the Swiss FM support cell, we are ready to answer the what, when, which, how, and we will be happy to capture the good practices by the sector actors, and to put it in the project so that this will be reflected in the pipeline projects that I already mentioned of the 1.5 billion. So this is what we are targeting to achieve together with us, I already mentioned one hand is acting with the another hand is the global water and sanitation center which is located at the AIT, which also helps us to formulate the project to monitor the project and all sort of a sort of work. So this is what my presentation today's is how we are going to bring advocacy inside the government and how we are going to implementing some of the policies are embedded with proper link if you are interested please go details later on and thank you so much for listening to me during the journey of this turtle and hopefully with the turtle will finish the touchline in 2013. Thank you so much over to you. Thank you very much Dr. Muit very engaging presentation highly informative great visualization as well with the turtle story. Thank you so much. Now I'd like to present our last but not least panelist Patrick T. Patrick is an in in company chief regulator of the Metropolitan Waterworks and sewage system regulatory office in the Philippines. He holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from the at the nail the manila university university, and he obtained his bachelor's of law of law degree from the University of the Philippines College of Law. Welcome Patrick. So, thank you, Sikia. Like to thank the Iowa for inviting me as well as our water links. Thank you very much and good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all our participants here today. going to talk about the regulatory approach towards achieving citywide inclusive sanitation in Metro Manila in the Philippines. About who we are, we are the MWSS regulatory office and our mandate is basically to set tariff adjustments during the rate rebasing and the most important one is we monitor the performance of the concessionaires who are providing the water and wastewater services in Metro Manila. As part of that monitoring, we also can impose penalties. This is actually the map of the concession area. If you notice, it's split into two. We have two concessionaires that's providing water and wastewater in Metro Manila. The reason why this was done so is because it would allow us to benchmark each other and to check on their performance and have a comparative benchmark on their performance. Basically the regulatory framework of the MWSSRO is that we are balancing the interests of the stakeholders. We need to balance the interests of the consumers vis-à-vis the concessionaires or the investors to ensure that the proper service is given and of course that the proper incentives would be also given to the investors and for them to be able to recoup their investment. Basically, this is the performance before of the MWSS before privatization, before the two concessionaires took over. If you can notice the water supply coverage was only at this month, 48%. Now we are at 94%. That's the major trust then of my office. But if you notice the sewer coverage was at this month from 9% to 26%. That's one of the things that we want to fix right now because only 26% of Metro Manila has sewer coverage and we need to improve that significantly in the coming years. In the meantime, what we are providing is sanitation or dislodging services to all the consumers that are not given or not covered by the sewer services of the two concessionaires. Now the basis for us to provide that service is the Clean Water Act of 2004. If you notice that the law provides that the two concessionaires are supposed to connect all of the establishments inside the concession area to the available sewerage system. This is the role of the MWSS and the water concessionaires in Metro Manila that they are mandated to provide that water and wastewater services. These provided by a law and it specifically provides that they need to do this in accordance with their concession agreements. So that's how we are able to require Manila water and Manila to concessionaires to provide wastewater services in Metro Manila. Of course, providing these services is very challenging. The four major challenges that we are facing right now are the first is the high investment cost. Of course, it costs more to treat wastewater than treating water for drinking. The second one is that we have a problem with our infrastructure footprint versus the availability of lands because Metro Manila is an urban area and it's very congested. The third is the environmental targets versus construction timeline because we want them to fast track their rollout to make sure that we have a citywide inclusive sanitation as soon as possible. And the last one is the lack of awareness and the low number of customers availing of these lodging services. So those are the four major problems that we are facing right now. But we have solutions for this one for all the problems. The first is the financial restructuring. The second is the best fit innovation, innovative infrastructure system, and the rewards recognition mechanism. And the third one is the information, education, and communication strategies. Going back to the finance, to the problems with the high investment cost, we are providing financial restructuring. If you notice on the slide, in this slide, before residential customers who are connected to the sewer network needs to pay a 50% of their water bill as their sewerage costs. However, this actually led to a problem of the acceptability of this service to the consumers because the consumers, they don't want to pay. If they are connected to the sewerage, then they will have to pay additional 50%. So what the MNSSRO did is we restructured the tire structure for sewerage and sanitation. And by 2012, we removed that already. So there's no more sewer charge for residential customers. And we reduced it, the commercial charge for commercials, commercial establishments to just 30%. And we increased the environmental charge to 20% to make up for this reduction. This is to encourage people to avail of these services because a lot of people are not availing or they do not want to get connected because they don't want to pay extra. Now, there's no more charge for our consumers to be connected, especially residential customers. They no longer have to pay extra to be connected to the sewer network. Of course, we also need to incentivize the two concessionaires to encourage them to increase their sewer connections. And just this last straight through basing, the MNSSRO approved their business plan and adjusted their tire structure and granted them an increase of their environmental charge, which will be based on their performance or based on their sewer coverage. So example, in the case of Manila water, their sewer coverage is already above 25%. So we allowed them to increase their environmental charge from 20% to 25%. And they are targeting by 2026, 30% sewer coverage. So by 2026, we will also increase their environmental charge to 30%. This is to encourage them and to incentivize them to fast track their rollout of their CAPEX projects for wastewater. So this will have an effect on their bottom line. In the case of Manila, the second concessionaire that's providing water and wastewater services in Metro Manila, they're still at 21%. So they will be able to increase their environmental charge to 25% once they have reached 25% sewer coverage in their service area. So this way, there's going to be an incentive on their part to fast track their rollout of their CAPEX projects for wastewater since before, their focus was just on water because there is a corresponding revenue for water, but there's none for sewerage. Now we're hoping that this new incentive will convince the two concessionaires to fast track their performance and their rollout of their projects to increase their wastewater coverage. Of course, another problem we are facing is that lack of available lands and the problem of rolling out this wastewater treatment plants and all these other projects in order for the proper services to be given to the consumers. So before, we have a separate system that's connected, that basically a separate system is the households are directly connected via sewer lines to the sewage treatment plants. Since we realized that this is really expensive, well this is the ideal system for our wastewater management, but this is really very, very expensive and there's a lot of challenge to construct this. So since there's really no way around providing that system, we basically in the meantime decided to do a combined system. This allows us to utilize the existing drainage system and to fast track the vision of providing sewerage services to our consumers and this can easily be upgraded to a separate system in the future. While in the meantime, we are providing dislodging services or sanitation services to all those customers that are still not covered by the sewer networks. Basically, I think the previous speaker mentioned that they have a plan for 2030 in Metro Manila. The plan for sewerage coverage in Metro Manila is until 2037 or 2036. That's because that's the end of their concession agreement. So they have until that time to fast track their service and to build the sewage treatment plant. So hopefully, that they will be increasing their sewer service population by then. Now in the meantime, that we're building this treatment plant, if you notice, we're building a lot of new sewage treatment plants and increasing the capacity. Another issue that we need to address is the best fit in the situation that we have in Metro Manila. We have a lot of areas that needs to be served but there are not really a lot of available lands. That's why there's really no one size fit all approach in Metro Manila. So sometimes we will accept the fact that there will be areas that will be serviced by a smaller sewage treatment plant and we have to build more sewage treatment plant to address this. And we will be utilizing different technologies depending on the size or location of these sewage treatment plants. That's why it doesn't necessarily mean one sewage treatment plant will have a particular capacity to treat the wastewater. So that's one of the things that we need to address and that's some things that we need to accept. So sometimes there will be sewage treatment plants that will be more efficient and there will be some sewage treatment plants that will cost more to treat the water. And again for sanitation coverage, what we are providing is once every five years, two concessionaires are required or they are required at no additional cost to provide sanitation and dislodging services to all their consumers. So these are their targets. If you notice the actual sanitation coverage is actually lower than the target. The reason behind this is the lack of... I would say that the lack of incentive for the consumers to avail of the services of the two concessionaires or basically they don't want to have their septic tank dislodged because of various reasons. Sometimes they don't want to do it because of lack of awareness or they don't know where their septic tank is located or they don't want to be bothered. So those are the things that we are facing and we hope to address that by providing things in the future. What else are we doing to incentivize the two concessionaires to increase and to create more, to build more sewage treatment plants? What we've recently did is we did a new water program in the main island side of Metro Manila or the western portion. This is actually the first drinkable reuse water. This is a direct portable reuse where it's basically from the sewage treatment plant the effluent will go directly to a treatment plant, mobile water treatment plant and directly provide the water to the consumers unlike in an indirect treatment plant where they will the sewage treatment plant effluent will go first to a body of water like it will be injected in groundwater or an aquifer or another reservoir and then it will be extracted. So the Philippines is actually only the third country in the world that is doing this. The first one is Namibia in Africa. The second is the United States and the Philippines is the third one and the first in Asia to adopt this direct portable reuse. Why are we doing this? The plan is this is actually an incentive for Manila water and Manila to be able to reach their last mile. Basically the problem right now is while we are already at 94% water coverage it's actually the last mile that's really difficult. The areas are really hard to go to because they're really at the farthest portions of Metro Manila already like like these are the areas that are really far from the water source. So these new water plants new new water the way they will reuse water will be able to provide water at these areas. So this actually will encourage Manila water and Manila to build more sewage treatment plant and they could just put a mobile treatment plant inside that sewage treatment plant and they will be able to provide additional water to their customers. So this will address the last mile problem of providing water and these are the future plans of additional new water in the rest of Metro Manila. We're hoping to provide around 600 000 people with additional to be provided new water. These are around more than 100 mld by 2029. What else are we doing to encourage people to avail of the services and for people to be aware of what is happening? We went through a social media campaign on sewage and sanitation. We had all this campus awareness drive on water and sewage and we have this award wherein we recognize the local government units that helped us in promoting dislodging services because as I presented earlier the availment rate really was slow. Actually during the COVID pandemic it went down to around 50 percent. Half of Metro Manila are not availing of their dislodging services which they have already paid for because it's part of their bill. It's part of the environmental charge and they don't need to pay extra but despite the fact that they have already paid for this and they don't need to pay extra, they don't want to avail of it. So we tapped the local government units to encourage their constituents to avail of this dislodging services. So because of this we are able to increase the availment rate to a higher rate. I think right now we are 80 percent so that's one of the initiatives that are always doing in order to increase awareness and to convince people to have their septic tanks dislodged and help clean the environment. Lastly all of this in order for the Metro Manila to achieve C2Y inclusive sanitation. It's not just one there's no magic bullet there's no one answer to everything but this is our basically what we are doing right now in order to achieve this. We are providing innovative solutions. We are tired of impact by providing additional additional incentives to the concessionaires by allowing them to recover of course public private partnership and social acceptability because we need all of these things in order for us to be able to achieve C2Y inclusive sanitation and that's it. Thank you. Next slide. Thank you very much. If you have any questions I'm here to answer. Thank you very much Patrik. Very strong and informative presentation, interesting perspectives and detailed facts. Thank you very much and this presentation brings to an end our presentations for today's webinar and we're going to move to our short Q&A session. I want to invite all our panelists to put their cameras on. Thank you very much and I have one question that I would invite all of our panelists to answer shortly maybe in the same order as presenting. The question is what are some of the incentives that we can give to utilities or service providers to ensure inclusive quality and sustainable service provision? Thank you. Maybe Sirash can come first if he has answer for that. What we are doing is the first is to provide them financial incentive. We allow them to increase their tariff adjustments of course in exchange for performance. That's why the tariff adjustment of the environmental charge in Metro Manila is tied to the performance of the two concessionaires. They need to increase their sewer coverage in order for them to be able to increase their environmental charge. Thank you very much Patrik. Anybody else wants to add anything? Yes if I may. Of course. Thank you Mai. Yes in the Philippines it's very clear the incentive is money right because it's a private run system but in most of the developing world in particular to Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America these are mostly public run systems. So the incentives are different and the incentive is not really of course the money but it's supposed to be good governance which is an incentive in itself that they are able to deliver the services to the public and that they get re-elected as a result right. And this is I think the big difference between public and private run systems because there's not amount of money on the tariff side that can incentivize public run systems. Public run systems always you can't do a full cost recovery in most cases because it will be quite prohibitive especially in in the far flung areas not maybe in in metropolises and city centers but in rural areas and it will be very difficult. So I would think that other forms of incentives have to be put maybe having clearer not incentive per se but clearer targets that they need to achieve year on year understanding how much that will cost and if government will not allow full cost recovery that government will pick up the tab by way of gap funding and that is the only way that public utilities will be able to to meet service obligations the way that Metro Manila private entities or private companies were able to meet that obligation. Thank you. Can I add something else? I also want to mention about what we are doing as I as I shown in my presentation. In order for us to get the assistance of the local government unions we also did some recognition. So it's a cheap form of carot for them. We give them an award and that they are recognized and they normally use this actually to show that they are performing well. So that's something that you can look into by recognizing them. Thank you very much for the answers. We have few questions now in our Q&A box. I'm going to try to go through as many as possible timing allow. One of them is what water quality parameters are set for sewage reuse drinking water and what was the response from customers after they found out it is from sewage to drinking? Okay. For the new water this is a direct water reuse what we are doing. The parameter is for the sewage it has to meet the the Department of Environmental Environment Standard for effluent water then it will go directly to a water treatment plant that will treat it in that will that the parameter should comply with the Philippine National Standard for drinking water. So we constantly monitor this and make sure that these pass the parameters that that make sure that it's safe and potable. Now what are the response from consumers? We are still monitoring that but so far I'm crossing my fingers no complaints no reports of any problems at all. We started last October and we're on our fourth month right now and things are looking good because there's some water interruptions in their area and the the ones that are given this reuse water this new water have water 24 hours and they have no water service interruptions. So that's an incentive for them not to complain actually. This is very positive thank you for answering this important matter. We have a question for Surash. Can you please elaborate on the need for having a regulator to deliver inclusive sanitation services? I think there is a need to have regulation because this is an interlinked aspect and related to governance of and it's a public service delivery what we're looking at. So that's why regulations interplay is important. However regulations need to catch up with the new set of formulations required to ultimately achieve this because in the past the regulations have been restricted to only one aspect of water management which needs to expand the ambit and and take up other interconnectedness of citywide sanitation aspects. If you look at the sanitation per se the definition itself is interconnected. So I think there is a dire need of having regulations and move to larger definition of environmental sanitation actually not just sanitation to FSM and then because this also needs to connect with the you know the water security aspects. So if there are in the past regulations for water supply and then operations have been based on that now there is more need as Patrick's experience saying that we are they are trying to bring in the you know the toilet to tap you can say the sewage to water to tap and I wanted to also add on to what Patrick had mentioned overall across the global south actually if you see the rate of sewage treatment of sewage treatment is very less. In general people do consume the you know or the water supply water suppliers whether it is public sector or private sector do pick up the water from the sources which are actually somebody's they live they pick up from somewhere downstream in the river and that is sewage actually you would say that all the sources of water supply are carrying sewage and in one way or the other way you can you Patrick is very bold to announce that you know they are taking this bold step to supply the treated sewage but in a way if you for example I've spent a lot of time in India I know that every city is downstream of somebody and then the water supply agencies actually pick up the sewage it is a sewage of the upstream city which comes and becomes a source of water supply and then the water supply treatment plants treat it and supply it back more or less every city does that in one way or the other way increasingly now I'm sure we will also give the same examples I'll stop here thank you. Thank you very much Suresh I'm going to go to the next question we have quite a few now how decentralized systems are achieving quality based treatment compared to centralized also OPEX to those systems are they in normal family budgets? Well I mean thank you so much Sikhar for giving me the opportunity you see the centralized system or decentralized system this is not the factor the factor is what the country needs I mean whether it is the Southeast Asian countries or Asian countries or African countries the point is we always agree that the centralized system maybe the best solution but if you consider the resources that require to establish the centralized system is very high it takes time longer time to establish that whereas the service of decentralization then decentralize it's not the system it's not the technology decentralization means decentralized authority, decentralized responsibility, decentralized accountability, decentralized resources when we give the you know small small part it becomes easier and it is time saving now the point is whether we really consider to save our time whether we have enough time for the journey of safely managed sanitation or we want to achieve the safely managed sanitation and with the same outcome with this you know but keeping the time frame within the limit of 2030 and within the limited resources decision is ours but definitely as I mentioned the you know that's a choice but the some cities some cities like very urban populated city like Dhaka city Megacity in Bangladesh or in other countries also the centralization is a prerequisite sort of thing but in addition it's a parallel sort of journey that needs to require for the sanitation like decentralization and centralization both but in other small towns still now decentralized way is the best way to reach the SDG 6.2 that's the opinion over to you Sika thank you very much dr. Muit I think we have time just for one more question and because we kept quite a few I'm just going to go for the next question in order which is for Mr. Patrick T who is paying the environmental charge is it everyone regardless of the service being provided for example ESECO to sew which system or FSM is the environmental charge being charged through the water bill and could you share the results of the implementation of the penalty system you have mentioned please thank you very much okay what we the environmental charge is part of the water bill of all consumers so because remember you need to when you treat water it goes through the environment and everyone's affected so we also want it to be affordable because we want to subsidize the providing of the dislodged especially to the consumers who are the low income households in Metro Manila so that's why we made it a one basket principle so the higher consumers will subsidize the low income households and low consumers and this will be part of their water bill so that's how we are we are able to do it and I think it's working a lot of people majority of the the low income households are being subsidized not just for wastewater but also in their water consumption so that's the case and wait sorry what's the second question is there a second question uh there was a could you could you share results of implementation of penalty systems or the penalties or for the penalties uh what we did recently is that if there's any problem with the service of Manila water and me or Maynilad we will impose financial penalties on them and this amount will be rebated to consumers and this amount cannot be recovered by the two concessionaires this will incentivize them to perform better and provide the proper service to their consumers if not they need to rebate a certain amount to consumers depending on what they fail to achieve or what if they fail to achieve any uh service obligation or if they fail to comply with any of their service obligations then they will we will be penalizing them we started penalizing them just during my term before there were no penalties i hope that answers the question i think it does thank you very much patrick uh we have caught a few more questions but unfortunately we don't have more time for any more thank you to all our um uh participants for sending the questions we we would try to answer in writing and um we'll share your questions to our panelists and uh get back to you in writing in the next couple of weeks um i would like to give the floor to my floor from water links for some closing remarks thank you thank you sikia and and thank you thank you to the panelists for such an engaging presentation and thank you to the participants as well for being actively participating and listening to us over the last hour and a half um i think quite a lot has been discussed but quite a lot clearly needs to be further discussed um but i go back to a few points uh to the point of of surish that regulation can really contribute to improved services uh we are not saying here that one must have a regulator uh in order to to assure services but it certainly can help uh patrick t from manila has clearly shown how regulation has uh greatly improved services in my home city of metro manila um from when it was run by the government uh till till now um why is regulation needed primarily to balance the interest of both the operator and the the consumer and even in public run systems i we say that this is needed because even the public operator needs to ensure that he has enough funds to deliver the services and this is always the problem in public run systems where the operator is stuck with a very artificially low tariff and therefore he is not able to deliver the services that is needed by customers regulation i feel can balance that as mentioned in the case of india they are very clear in the state of odisha that we do not need full cost recovery but they understand what the gap fund is the regulator can be that person who can then identify in all cities that are being provided services by public run systems to determine that gap funding to ensure that the utilities have the wherewithal to deliver these services um to the point of uh of dr moid um there is uh decentralized or centralized it's really up to you it depends on the city it depends on the situation in large cities obviously like metro manila like uh like koala lumpur uh like deli obviously you need uh sewage but in rural areas or even sub metropolises maybe it is not needed um bangladesh is is trying to look into how to go about it uh and they are giving themselves a very strict period of up to 2030 so good luck uh to that um i also would like to say that um we have a lot here going uh in terms of uh for those of you who want to continue the discussion i w a and its new initiative uh will certainly be able to assist so please continue to be active in that the fsm cells that are present in several countries bangladesh included as dr moid had presented supported by the gates foundation uh they have a wide range of information and data for those of you who are interested in further um learning about this and contributing uh towards really achieving c wise for each of our countries so with that i give it back to seekia thank you once again to i w a for inviting us to co to collaborate with you on this webinar thank you very much my for the closing remarks uh i would like to thank all our panelists and participants for being with us today i think we can all agree that it that was very informative session uh just to close i would like to um announce our upcoming webinar uh of i w a which is water safety planning um and also the next webinar we have uh in one of our specialist group is empowering women in water perspectives from the african regions uh we'll be very happy if our participants join for these two webinars um and um also we have um we we're going to participate uh in abijan in uh codivoir afua and fsm uh congress uh fsm seven congress uh with few technical sessions and workshops uh you can read about them on our screen at the moment thank you very much if you want to join i w a there's a 20 discount until 31st of december uh 2023 by using the code that you can see on on your screen with that i want to say uh to wish a good day ahead or lovely evening depending on where you are and thank you for being with us goodbye