Ahmedabad: The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) will celebrate its fourth year of completion on 2nd October 2018. SBM has now become a people’s movement and a quarter of urban lndia has become open defection free (ODF). Having achieved ODF the urban local bodies need guidance to sustain it and achieve ODF plus. The SBM program is also expected to improve tourism in India.
In this context, the Government of India and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is supporting, “Moving Towards Sanitation for All (MISAAL)” program with focus on urban sanitation in select historic cities of Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan. It is envisioned to scale up learnings from these intervention cities to other cities of respective states through the City Managers’ Associations of respective states and with support from International City/County Managers Association based in Washington DC.

USAID’s India partnership program is uniquely structured to bring together technical and financial resources of public and private institutions, government agencies and USAID with a local technical organization to lead the program.

Urban Management Centre, Ahmedabad is the technical lead for MISAAL program.

The aim of MISAAL is to make transformative changes in city of Ahmedabad which has bagged the UNESCO’s World Heritage inscription. MISAAL will align its activities with the Swachh Bharat Mission and will help the city of Ahmedabad to demonstrate sustained ODF, and meeting ODF+ criteria through strengthened systems and processes and behavior change strategies.

Specific activities to be carried by under the program are (a) Sanitation mapping including technical audit and improvement of public and community toilets; (b) prepare IT-based knowledge management tools; (c) Capacity building of municipal functionaries through e-learning, national and international city-city partnership, (c) strengthen municipal associations; and (d) provide regulatory and policy support. The program will be very helpful to further improve sanitation for its residents and tourists.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and Urban Management Centre will launch a three-year partnership program on August 10, 2018. It will be inaugurated by Ms. Bijal Patel Hon. Mayor, AMC.

Mr. Mukesh Puri (IAS) Principal Secretary, UD&UHD, Government of Gujarat will give the key note address on urban sanitation in Gujarat. Mr. Vijay Nehra (IAS) Municipal Commissioner, AMC will speak on the need to focus on sanitation improvements in Ahmedabad and Mr. Mark Peters. WASH Team Lead, USAID India will speak on ‘Focus on Urban Water, Sanitation for Health Alliance’. AMC and Urban Management Centre will sign a Declaration of Cooperation for the program.