Dagupan named pilot area for sustainable sanitation
THE city of Dagupan has been granted a $200,000 funding for a sanitation project under the Swedish International Development Agency’s (SIDA) Sustainable Sanitation for East Asia (SUSEA).
Dagupan will be one of the pilot areas for the program and will be the model for highly-urbanized cities.
The SUSEA team, headed by former Health Secretary Jaime Galvez Tan, recently visited Dagupan and met with City Administrator Alvin Fernandez and Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez.
The program will be implemented in the Philippines by the Australia-based Coffey agency, in cooperation with the World Bank and the Department of Health.
Tan said SIDA has allocated $3 million in financial and technical assistance for all the pilot areas in the Philippines.
The other pilot areas are Bauko, Mt. Province for Mountainous Municipalities; Guiuan, Eastern Samar for coastal municipalities; General Santos City for semi-urbanizing city; and Polomolok and Alabel, Cotabato for rural municipalities.
The vice mayor said although consultation in connection with the program already started in the city, funding from SIDA will be only remitted beginning January next year.
The project is set for a two-year implementation period.
Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. will sign a memorandum of agreement on September 6 with Yolanda Oliveros of the National Center for Disease Prevention Control of the Department of Health for the implementation of SUSEA with Regional Health Director Eduardo Janairo and City Health Officer Leonard Carbonell witnessing.
The mayor already issued an executive order creating a council which will serve as the counterpart of the technical and management staff of the SUSEA.
City Administrator Fernandez said sustainable sanitation concerns drinking water, its source, including the water table, including sewerage and waste water.
Dr. Tan said if the pilot areas have plans, the World Bank has opened a special window to finance the construction of waste water treatment plants.
City Administrator Fernandez said the amount that would be allocated for Dagupan City will be spent for capability building, information dissemination to inform the public on the right way of using, disposing and recycling water.—LM
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