Delivering low-cost, high quality sanitation – at scale
Pakistan’s low-cost sanitation programme known as the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) has become famous worldwide for how it keeps costs down, delivers high quality sanitation and involves poor communities in upgrading their own settlements. And it works – at scale. Arif Hasan, one of its prime architects, recounts how it came about and the people who were instrumental in making it happen.
Devastating floods in Pakistan destroy hospitals, schools and sanitation systems (Photo: UNICEF Canada, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Despite its name, the scope and impact of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) is much greater than that of a ‘pilot project’ and has expanded to many areas beyond Orangi (a municipality of Karachi) – including informal settlements in other urban areas in Pakistan, and beyond.
Beginnings
Sometime in 1973, I received a phone call from Ghulam Kibriya from the federal government’s Appropriate Technology Development Cell (ATDC). He wanted to see me immediately. I told him I was too busy but 20 minutes later, a rather tall man walked into my office and introduced himself as chairperson of the ATDC.
He discussed housing with me, and said he wanted me as a technical consultant to his organisation. He had brought along a typist and a typewriter, who produced a contract which read: “the power vested in him by the President of Pakistan, hereby appointed architect Arif Hasan as a technical consultant to the ATDC, on terms and conditions that will be decided subsequently. His term in office begins today”.
Later I learned that he had no such powers, and that the decision to appoint me was a personal one. I also learned from working with Ghulam Kibriya that if the people can afford your product, you have a national programme. But if a government subsidy is needed to make it affordable, you have a number of projects that may not be sustainable.
Pakistan’s biggest problem – sanitation
Cities and settlements were overflowing with sewage, creating immense environmental and health problems, and polluting the sea and most freshwater bodies – the only disposal points.
So Ghulam Kibriya decided in 1974 that the ATDC should work on this. I was asked to try to understand why sanitation projects are so expensive that neither the people nor the state can afford them.
I looked at tender documents of a number of government projects and identified the expensive items. These were deep excavations and related manholes, jointing details and the pipes, and engineering standards required for gradients, so as to make the drains self-cleansing. A military coup in 1977 halted the work and Ghulam Kibriya and I, being good democracy-loving individuals, resigned from the ATDC.
In 1981, Ghulam Kibriya informed me that the Orangi Pilot Project, which the renowned social scientist Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan had initiated, was having problems with its sanitation programme, and that maybe I could be of assistance.
Working with OPP
In a short meeting with Dr Khan, he complained bitterly about the greed and lack of innovation in Pakistani professionals and academic institutions. They had been unable to help him make sanitation technology and extension processes simpler and cheaper that communities could finance, build, manage and maintain themselves. He also expressed his doubts as to whether I could help him.
On Ghulam Kibriya’s insistence, I revisited Orangi and studied the problems of sanitation. Dr Khan liked my assessment and came to see me. He again spoke against the engineers and architects, called them thieves and anti-poor, and said that their solutions were so expensive that the people couldn’t possibly afford them.
And that the solution to the problem lay in the affordability of sanitation by the people of Orangi.
Key players and the key problem
In books, papers and news reports on the OPP, there is seldom any mention of Ghulam Kibriya, although he played an important role in developing some of the extension concepts of both its sanitation and housing programmes.
The extension work was also managed by the three social organisers Dr Khan had selected from the working class communities of Orangi. Ramzan Qureshi was a contractor for home-based tailoring, Hafiz Arain was a political worker and rickshaw driver, and Nooruddin Saifee was a plumber. Their role is also rarely acknowledged, but without them, the programme could not have taken off.
The most important problem was that most sewer lines became clogged because of a lack of water. To solve this, I suggested a small septic tank with each toilet, so that only liquid would go into the system. The minimum cost of such a tank was 2,400 rupees, which Dr Khan deemed unaffordable. When I asked him what would be affordable, he replied 240 rupees.
No argument could make him alter this figure. So we decided that we would work backwards and design a septic tank costing 240 rupees.
Conflicts
Given the publicity the project was receiving, all developments were closely monitored by engineers at the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and by elected local councillors.
My proposals came under attack from all sides, even from the United Nations (UN) which disagreed about the location of the office, and wanted a defined project area.
The engineers objected to the OPP discharging sewage into the natural drainage system and said the standards developed by me were not long lasting. Special criticism was made of the one-chamber septic tank.
Dr Khan wanted OPP social organisers to be from Orangi, while the UN called them ‘muscle men’ and wanted graduates in their place.
As we urgently needed a map of the township, UN staff suggested hiring a survey company. I proposed students of architecture and engineering, under the supervision of Parveen Rehman (who had just joined the OPP), should do this to strengthen links with the universities.
Results matter
Up to 2016, Orangi residents had built sanitation in 7,280 lanes on the same principles and invested 168 million rupees in the process. Meanwhile OPP had become a part of the Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute where people from all over Pakistan – including elected councillors, district engineers and social activists – came to receive training.
As a result, in 651 urban locations outside of Orangi, sanitation systems in 6,459 lanes were developed, serving 77,859 households. In these, people had invested 206 million rupees, and the government 700 million.
In addition, sanitary facilities were installed in 14,011 households, spread throughout 1,821 lanes in various villages. The total cost was 378 million rupees – more than half of which was paid for by residents who financed, built and managed the construction themselves.
The rest, consisting of disposal points and trunk sewers, was built by local government agencies based on the OPP’s advice.
A unique style
The manner in which the OPP operated had a lot to do with the personal culture of Akhtar Hameed Khan. He always wore a khaddar (hand-woven cotton cloth) suit and drove (erratically) a ramshackle jeep.
When the many students, activists, NGO workers and community organisations came to visit him, OPP reports, accounts and research papers were made available to all – nothing was hidden.
He had three very different manners of communication: with people from the community; with students and their teachers; and lastly with state officials and international agencies. With community organisations, conversations were interwoven with folk stories, local wisdom and aphorisms – often taken from Buddhist texts and from the Persian poet Sa’di.
The process adopted by Dr Khan is the antithesis of conventional planning, but makes sense if viewed from the ‘self-help’ aspect. To accommodate his ‘social model’, technical and procedural changes were required to avoid rejection by the communities.
Ghulam Kibriya was also a key figure who used what might be termed ‘the Orangi approach’ – travelling throughout Pakistan with a small collapsible table and chairs, with a secretary and typewriter, issuing orders ‘on behalf of the president of Pakistan’.
I am happy to have been associated with these two remarkable men, who have influenced the thinking of three generations and continue to do so.
