A human waste treatment center built in Mechinagar-14 with a grant of Rs 78.1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has remained unused for the past five years. Established to process human waste into organic fertilizer, the center was funded through the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and was intended to serve three local governments—Mechinagar, Birtamod, and Buddhashanti.
The three local governments contributed an additional Rs 13.7 million, bringing the total cost of the project to Rs 91.8 million. However, despite the significant investment, the center has failed to function effectively, and much of its infrastructure and equipment remain idle.
The facility was handed over to the Third Small Town Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Project by ADB and is currently overseen by the Charali Small Town Water Supply and Sanitation Consumers’ Committee. The center was designed to produce organic fertilizer by processing human excreta, but it has not even conducted a test run in five years.
According to the committee Chairman Rajan Chimaria, the center has been unable to operate due to a shortage of fecal sludge, lack of skilled technical manpower, and insufficient operational resources. "We need around 150 tankers of sludge per month for processing, but we never receive more than 18 to 30 tankers," Chimaria said. "Many private tankers prefer to dump sludge into rivers and forests instead of paying Rs 500 per tanker to dispose of it at the center."
Currently, if the center’s own tanker collects waste from households, the fee is Rs 3,000 per trip. The reluctance of private tankers to use the facility has led to a critical shortage of raw materials for processing. Out of the 28 sludge treatment tanks built at the center, 14 have remained empty since its inception, and the remaining tanks are also largely unused.
The situation is further worsened by the lack of skilled manpower to operate the state-of-the-art laboratory built for testing sludge, water, and organic fertilizers. Premraj Ghimire, secretary of the consumers' committee, stated that the center is running at an annual loss of Rs 300,000.
"The donors provided the infrastructure, but there was no proper plan for staffing and operational resources," he said. "Currently, we have only one tanker driver and an assistant. A new partnership model between the government and the private sector is necessary to make the center operational."
The center has well-equipped infrastructure, including a two-story office building, a separate laboratory building, multiple processing structures, and a concrete storage facility for drying and storing organic fertilizer. However, without adequate manpower and legal enforcement to regulate waste disposal, the facility remains nonfunctional.
Monitoring by Donor Team
On Sunday, a monitoring team from the Koshi Provincial Government and a British donor agency assessed the situation at the Charali Fecal Waste Treatment Center. The team was led by Lisa Ruje, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Advisor for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and Krishna Prasad Rajbanshi, head of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Division at the Koshi Province Government.
During the inspection, Chairman Chimaria, former Chairman Lal Bahadur Thebe, and Secretary Ghimire briefed the team on the center’s challenges, including the need for skilled laboratory technicians, equipment maintenance, an additional tanker, and legal provisions to prevent private tankers from dumping sludge into rivers and forests. The monitoring team emphasized the urgency of addressing these issues to make the center functional and effective. -- RSS
