WASH National Consultant - Water Supply – Capacity Building

Contract

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Background:

Although Bangladesh has made progress towards achieving its goal of universal access to improved water supply, which is almost 98.5 percent as per recent MICS 2019. However, only 42.6 percent household members have access with an improved drinking water source located on premises, available when needed, free from E. coli and arsenic within the limit of Bangladesh Standards. 11.8 percent household population has over 50 ppb arsenic concentration in their source water and 40.3 percent household population have E Coli contamination at source water.

UNICEF with DPHE and NGO partners implemented an innovative and practical approach to address the arsenic issue with the arsenic mitigation approach. From September 2017- December 2021, UNICEF implemented the arsenic safe union project in three highly contaminated Upazilas in Sylhet, Satkhira and Cumilla. A total 251 villages in the project areas and 10 unions declared as arsenic safe. About 1,834 arsenic safe water points constructed following arsenic mitigation protocol which includes arsenic screening, equity based site selection, feasibility assessment, safe water points installation, monitoring, national monitoring network and digital data management tool for data acquisition, analysis and graphical visuals.

In December 2021, UNICEF have received initial $2.0M as bridging before entering large thematic funding from Sweden Embassy to support the technical assistance to government. Under this program different partners will work and share their expertise in different sectors. ITN-BUET will support in different training program and national water quality monitoring protocols where KTH consortium will involve in policy improvement aligned with PSB. This consortium will also support in capacity building program of local drillers followed by certification and registration and national monitoring network establishment with auto mechanism. KTH consortium will also engage in digital data management platform incorporation in national level and piloting aquifer mapping in selected unions. At the same time NGO partners will work on the community mobilization, site selection of water points, ODF and sanitation and hygiene promotion at these targeted upazilas.

To provide the necessary support to the government and the WASH Section in implementation of Technical assistance project on arsenic screening, development of policy implementation protocol, capacity development program, and establishment of national monitoring network, aquifer mapping and publications there is a need to recruit national consultants to support DPHE and WASH Section in Dhaka and in the field.

For detail information, please see attached TOR ToR for Water Supply Consultant-July22.docx