Financing the sanitation programme of the Orangi Pilot Project—Research and Training Institute in Pakistan

This paper describes the financing mechanisms for the sanitation programme supported by the Orangi Pilot Project's Research and Training Institute (OPP—RTI) in informal settlements in Karachi and other urban centres in Pakistan. These centre on OPP—RTI support for the inhabitants of a lane to plan, implement and finance the “internal components” — sanitary latrines in the houses, underground sewers in the lanes and neighbourhood collector sewers — and support for local governments to finance the larger “external” trunk sewers into which the neighbourhood sewers feed and also treatment plants. The inhabitants have to raise all the funding to cover the costs of the internal components and in around 300 locations in Pakistan, communities have financed, managed and built their own internal sanitation systems. Local governments can also afford to install the external systems as they no longer have to fund the internal components, and as OPP—RTI has helped them develop much lower-cost methods for planning and building trunk sewers.