WaterAid's collaboration with NUST
WaterAid has partnered with NUST to undertake research and development of innovative low-cost WASH solutions. The research partnership aims to accelerate coverage of WASH services as well as showcase successful models for the service providers and government departments. The SDG targets for water, sanitation, and hygiene pose a serious challenge for the next twelve years.
In Pakistan, 36% of people have access to safely managed water and 58% access to basic sanitation. There is zero per cent coverage for safely managed sanitation as per the requirement of SDG 6. In the sanitation sector, moving from basic sanitation (latrine use only) to improved and safely managed sanitation requires either safe excreta disposal on-site or treated off-site. Pakistan being a populous country is facing alarming urbanisation and such a scenario requires affordable, effective, and sustainable sanitation technologies either for on-site treatment (without sewers) or piped sewer network combined with off-site treatment for urban centres as well as rural areas. Under the proposed project, sanitation technologies for small to medium-sized cities will be investigated for effective wastewater treatment and safe disposal in urban areas particularly focusing on poor communities in informal settlements.
NUST and WaterAid have worked on providing end-pipe technological solutions in the rural area of Muzaffargarh as well as in a controlled environment of Lalamusa Local Academy. The focus would be to maintain oversight and create complete successful models for showcasing nationally. In the case of urban, there will be the case of working with a municipality, therefore, capacity building of municipality technical staff and local government representatives on applied engineering knowledge and skills will be provided to ensure long term sustainability of such solutions. Lastly, the government stakeholders will be influenced with affordable and sustainable wastewater treatment systems (WWTS).