Sanitation promotion through mobile centres

In spite of concerted efforts of government, NGOs and private sector the level of rural sanitation coverage in Bangladesh crawls at a rate far below expectation. The decade old countrywide rural sanitation programme is structured on a network of nearly 1000 sanitation centres. The mandate of these centres is to provide hardware and software services to the people under their respective jurisdiction. Programme monitoring reveals that the performance of these centres is declining and gradual increase in stockpiling of latrine components is an emerging problem. The primary reason is being the saturation of demand within the natural command area of a centre. In this context, promotion of sanitation through mobile centres is being conceptualized recently. These proposed mobile centres are expected to render similar services to their respective command area, while the nature of their establishment set up will allow their relocation to another place identified on a demand driven basis. This continued relocation process will optimize resource investment and will accelerate sanitation coverage particularly in remote areas. A recent evaluation on a few pilot mobile centres, indicates encouraging response and viability of the concept. The paper aims at highlighting the evaluation findings and drawing conclusions relating to sanitation promotion through mobile centres.