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Speech of Minister of Urban Public Utilities Mohamed Maharoof at the budget debate - 2003 Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present to this House the new vision and the approach of my Ministry on the subject of Urban Public Utilities.

Urban Public Utilities has been defined in a narrow sense to include such physical infrastructure as drainage, water supply, sewerage, waste disposal and access roads.

I discussed with the officials of my ministry and the experts from professional bodies and was able to formulate a new and broad definition for the term of "urban public utilities".

I do not want to continue urban public utilities just for providing physical facilities. I would therefore wish to include all components that help to improve the overall quality of life of the people in urban areas mainly focusing on undeserved groups. Just providing physical facilities will not help these people to lead a decent life in an urban context. Therefore, we are now going to improve social cultural aspects such as health, education, environment, ethnic harmony, sports, leisure time activities and improve their saving habits and also to introduce appropriate enterprises for improving the income of urban people.

It has been revealed at the last census of population conducted in 2001, that about 30 per cent of the population is living in urban areas. With the present trends of urbanization it is projected that this percentage would increase to about 60 in 2025.

This means that we ought to have proper planning for urban development. I am pleased to state that our Hon. Prime Minister has already appointed a task force to formulate a broad policy framework for the urban sector and my ministry is playing an important role in this task force and Secretary of my ministry is a member of the task force and Chairman of the Sub Committee on urban governance.

We will have a coherent urban policy and all programmes and projects on urban development will emanate from that policy in future.

It may be interest to note that the communities in urban settlements are thoroughly indebted when they try to fulfil their day to day needs and thus they pay as much interest as 20% a month by mortgaging in their valuable assets.

This does not mean that we will neglect the physical facilities required by the urban communities to lead a decent life. We will continue to provide them with such facilities with the participation and contribution from the user communities. We work very closely with the local authority in the area, NGOs and CBOs and other relevant stakeholders which will help to ensure the long-term sustainability of community activities even after the project interventions are withdrawn.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to inform this House that we have worked in 36 urban settlements in the Colombo metropolitan area benefiting over 5,000 households in the region and a sum of over 50 Million rupees has been spent up to the end of October 2002 on the infrastructure improvement of urban settlements.

A major breakthrough of the Urban Settlements Improvement Programme which is funded jointly by the World Bank and Japan Bank for International Corporation has been the financial contribution made by the user communities to develop the basic infrastructure within the settlement and the savings made by them by implementing such work through community contracting system.

All construction work is done by the Community Organization and not by outside contractors. The people have so far contributed a couple of million rupees in cash as their shares of such infrastructure improvements.

Further they have saved a couple of million rupees in the bank accounts held by the community organizations for necessary improvements and operation and maintenance works of their settlements.

In these settlements over 2,500 households have been provided with pipe borne drinking water, over 5,000 households have been provided with drainage facilities, and over 4,000 households have been provided with sewerage and solid waste disposal facilities under this programme.

A significant and notable achievement is that we are working very closely with the other development agencies such as National Housing Development Authority, Urban Development Authority, Road Development Authority, Land Ministry, Provincial Councils and Divisional Secretariats to provide the security of tenure for the lands they are living in these settlements as a means to promote further investments by them and to transfer the ownership of common areas such as internal roads, Community Centres, drainage system etc. to the respective urban authorities for further development and maintenance.

I am pleased to inform this House that we are very successfully working in partnership with all relevant state agencies, NGOs and CBOs, private sector and University network as a concerted effort to bring about the desired results.

I am glad to bring to the notice of this House that my Ministry acted in a creative manner and was able to introduce several new components under the broad term of urban public utilities. Let me highlight some of the key components so introduced;

(a) Rain Water Harvesting

Rain water harvesting has been introduced in urban settlements as an alternative source for domestic water needs. It has so far been introduced in this country as an individual household facility.

But my ministry has been able to introduce rain water harvesting as a community facility by providing rain water collecting tanks to capture the rain water from the roofs of common buildings in such settlements. We have already installed a number of tanks in Colombo City area and some more tanks are under construction. We will certainly expand this facility to other urban areas as well in future.

We have been using highly treated and expensive pipeborne water for all our domestic purposes in addition to drinking such as washing, watering gardens and washing cars etc.

Studies have revealed that only 1/3 of the rain water is being utilized for human needs and allow the balance 2/3 to go waste creating various other problems such as spilling of storm water drainage and flooding. We are now planning to use a part of this rain water for productive use of the communities.

(b) Empowerment of Women

We have observed that women members of these settlements play a very important role to sustain the households engaging in community activities.

However, the recognition given to the women in the settlements has not been very encouraging. Our ministry has selected several urban settlements for empowerment of women on pilot basis.

What I mean as empowerment is to engage women effectively in thrift and credit management, upgrading the environment of households and engaging in community activities through developing institutional linkages with all interacting entities. We have selected some settlements in Colombo and Kolonnawa for these pilot projects.

Mr. Speaker, Management of these pilot projects will not be done by the officials of the Ministry or the Project. Instead, we have selected two leading women NGOs for this purpose. They are, Women's Community Development Association at Weligapola of Ratnapura and Women's Federation in Hambantota.

These two NGOs will facilitate the women empowerment process. We have observed that members of women NGOs are more effective in mobilizing and motivating the women members of the urban settlements and we hope to achieve immense benefits through this process.

(c) Integrated Waste Management

I am pleased to inform this House that we have been able to introduce an alternative system for effective waste management. So far the disposal of garbage has been considered as a sole responsibility of the local authority. As we are all aware local authority does not have required physical, financial and manpower resources to effectively deal with the garbage disposal problem.

We have introduced integrated waste management in selected urban settlements some of them are, Badovita in Attidiya, Kadolkele in Negombo and Singhapura in Kolonnawa. In these settlements the households at domestic level sort out the waste into 4 categories such as paper, glass plastic and biodegradable waste. Paper, glass, plastic are collected and sold in bulk on commercial basis to the prospective buyers by the community organization.

The balance garbage is collected by the local authorities. This system has helped to increase the income of households as well.

Based on the success of these pilot projects we are planning to expand similar activities into other urban settlements. This programme will be implemented in partnership with the urban, local authorities and user communities.

(d) Environmental Planning for Sub-Urban Areas

Mr. Speaker, as we all know a few kilometres away from this historical building, the Parliament is an area which is very fast urbanising. It has been observed that various development activities such as roads, houses, commercial establishments, industries are being located in an unplanned ad hoc manner in this area.

This trend of unplanned development will end up with enormous undesirable results creating irreversible social and environmental problems in future. My Ministry has selected Kaduwela Pradeshiya Sabha area for a detailed study of the present situations, issues and future trends of such development. If business as usual continues without proper planning there would be serious social and environmental issues in these areas. The proposed study intends to recommend an integrated and planned approach on such infrastructure development and commercial management in such fast urbanising areas. This study will hopefully recommend the reorganisation of infrastructure as well as conservations of forest, water bodies and measures of solid waste management.

We are planning to enhance the capacity of the local institutions such as Kaduwela Pradeshiya Sabha and Divisional Secretariat to play a lead role in planning of future integrated development of the area. This study will be undertaken by the University of Moratuwa. I am sure that this experience of long-term planning will be useful for the other local authorities in planning and managing their programmes.

(e) Multi-Facility Socio-cultural Centres

Mr. Speaker, I have found several state owned properties in urban areas which are under-utilised. I discussed with my advisors and officials as to how we could put these properties with land into good use.

They came out with an excellent concept of converting these properties into centres which can provide services to the surrounding communities in a more modern and effective manner. We are planning to establish multi-facility centres by creating social, cultural space for surrounding urban communities. These centres will provide such facilities as sports and recreation, training in IT and languages, a food court and market centre, a mall to accommodate shopping and other utility stalls. There will be one stop payment centre for all utility services.

This centre also will have facilities for exhibition and community functions, day care center, a medical facility, community library and housing. All these multi-facilities will cater preliminary to the youth of the low income communities in the area enabling them to integrate into the social mainstream to lead a reasonably high quality of life. I am glad to say that we have already prepared architects' plans with a view to establishing the first centre of this nature at Kolonnawa.

We have already been allocated with 186 million rupees for the year 2003 from the national budget for development projects. In addition some new donors have already indicated that they would support some of the proposed new projects of my ministry in the next years.

We are hoping to expand our development activities into the other cities outside the Colombo Metropolitan Region including North, East, South and other regions in the country.

We are all aware that a large percentage of the population in the city of Colombo live in slums and shanties which are below the acceptable levels of the norms set by UN Habitat. I am therefore proposing a habitat improvement programme with a required public utility component offering them better living environment mainly for slum and shanty dwellers.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to state that I received the fullest cooperation of the UNF Government led by our leader Hon. Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

In conclusion I would be pleased to extend my thanks to the Secretary and other officials of my ministry and the Director and his staff of the Urban Settlement Improvement Programme for their committed support extend to me in achieving the broad objective of improving the quality of life of undeserved communities of this country.

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