Sri Lanka to host SACOSAN Regional Summit

City Planning, Water Supply and Higher Education Minister Rauff Hakeem

The South Asian Conference on Sustainable Solution for Sanitation (3S), organised by the Regional Centre for Sanitation established by the Ministry of City Planning Water Supply and Higher Education, will be held from 21-23 February at Berjaya Hotel Colombo.

The conference will be held under the patronage of City Planning, Water Supply and Higher Education Minister Rauff Hakeem and State Minister Lucky Jayawardene. 

The three-day conference aims at providing a platform to learn about scalable sanitation solutions and best practices from South Asian governments and water and sanitation experts and practioners from the region. 

This conference is being viewed as the first step towards fostering knowledge-sharing linkages amongst practioners and governments in the region and act as a complementary process in translating the spirit of the South Asian Conference on Sanitation’s (SACOSAN) commitment into action. 

Delegates across the region will share their knowledge and experience on four thematic areas including Improving Sector Governance through Policy and Program Monitoring, Reporting and Accountability Instruments, Scalable Faucal Sludge and Septage Management Solutions, Environmentally Sustainable and Climate Resilient Sanitation Solutions and Building Blocks for Achieving Inclusive and Equitable Sanitation. 

 The 3S conference is attended by regional governments, professionals and practices from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan and Maldives.

The focus areas of the symposium include evidence-based policy changes and accountability instruments for SACOSAN countries to achieve safely-managed sanitation, promotion of a business model for viable FSM with the identification of the values chain and reduce resources mobilised for operationalising the model. 

In addition it will address social and environmental safeguard policy triggers, best practices to overcome individual on site sanitation with affordable and environmentally acceptable and sustainable solutions to archive SDG 6 Target 6.2, and promote and operationalise a model for all-inclusive approach for public conveniences and institutional sanitation to address innovative design for hardware for menstrual hygiene management, access to differently-abled people and hand-washing, and financing safely-managed sanitation towards achieving SDG 6 Target 6.2.