A do-gooding firm for urban super poor

---

A Z M Anas
Shah Emdadul Haque is not a deep-pocketed man to hop on the philanthropy bandwagon, but the 65-year-old retiree has wagered on water trade to further his favoured cause: Serving the city's super-poor.
So focused was he on his goal that Mr Haque started up Nagar Sheba to peddle water to slum residents in Mirpur area in 2005--just a year after retiring from the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA), the giant public utility. In addition to his life savings, he managed to corral seed money from some of his do-gooder pals.
The 'innovative' upstart- modelled on Nobel Peace Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus's social business concept--obtained permission from the Dhaka City Corporation (South) to run the business.
Although the venture seems to be small compared with the massive demand, Mr Haque wants to take the urban poor-from the capital's slum-dwellers to daily-wage earners to homeless people-under his wing.
"We're not driven by profits. The idea is to provide low-cost water to the 'very poor' who are now paying higher to maastans and intermediaries," managing director of the enterprise says in an interview at his one-room office behind Sony Cinema Hall in Mirpur.
Dhaka, at 15 million residents, is one of the fastest-growing mega cities in Asia. Its population is on track to reach 20 million by 2020, according to the United Nations, making it the world's third largest city.
The World Bank says the capital alone generates 40 per cent of the country's annual economic output, but its boom has bypassed millions who live in slums without water, electricity and gas supplies.
Out of 3.0 million slum dwellers, Taqsem A Khan, managing director at the 3,000-employee-strong WASA, has said, his utility can cover only 750,000, meaning three-quarters of them are still left unserved.
Slum residents make up one-third of Dhaka's population and Mr Khan says the WASA has planned to double the coverage in the next one year.
But his agency's efforts to provide low-income communities with piped water are handicapped by legal and financial constraints, the WASA executive head said.
Nagar Sheba began supplying water to the Kalyanpur slum in 2005. When the Dhaka WASA installed pipelines connecting the slum to its supply network, the enterprise found a niche among roadside, makeshift tea stalls frequented by its target groups who are known as "bottom billions."
"Water at roadside shops is always dirty and polluted. We've decided to sell water to the shops at lower prices so that the poor customers can drink pure water," the head of the seven-year-old company said.
The four van-pullers ferry water to the roadside tea stalls and food outlets around Kalyanpur, Technical Crossings, Ansar Camp, Notun Bazar, Mirpur-1 and Sony Cinema Hall areas, he added.
As a part-timer, van-puller Shah Alam does so everyday, with two vans each carrying 400 litres. He charges Tk 8.0-10 for each pot holding 24 litres of water.
He earns Tk 8,000-Tk 9,000 a month and contributes a slice of it to the Nagar Sheba, which purchases water directly from the WASA main supply point in Mirpur.
The company chief does everything abiding by laws and official rules. He entered into a legal contract with the WASA for water purchase. As a former revenue officer of the Dhaka WASA, it was easier for him to broker the deal by navigating the bureaucracy at the public utility that serves 12.5 million city residents.
"It's a small endeavour on our part to help alleviate the water woes of the poor while fighting off social exclusion," the bespectacled man on a white baseball cap said.
In 2007, Mr Haque pioneered introducing two mobile toilets, given its huge demand in a city where thousands of homeless and pavement-dwellers live without any sanitation facility.
Born and raised in Rangpur, Mr Haque has a firsthand knowledge of how thousands of migrant workers from the northern hinterland pour into this megalopolis each year to escape extreme poverty and hunger. Many of whom even cannot afford to stay in rented houses and end up in railway stations and numerous public places.
"It's a very good initiative. You see, there's no public toilet here," said Mohammad Baker, the 42-year-old rickshaw-puller from northern Kurigram district, as he handed out Tk 5.0 in users' fees to the caretaker of the mobile lavatory, perched before the emergency unit of the state-aided Dhaka Medical College and Hospital.
But this innovative venture is now at stake, as its key backers dip into their personal savings to defray the company's operating expenses, averaging Tk 10,000 a month.
"Economies of scale are crucial. If we can expand, the company will break even in a year and that will enable us to grow," Mr Haque said.
"It'll be painful if this innovative social business firm folds its operation," says Azahar Ali who coordinates a US$120 million project intended to improve the conditions of 3.0 million urban poor living in 24 cities and towns across the country.
The Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR) programme is being run by the state-run Local Government Engineering Division (LGED) and the UNDP with funding from the UK's Department for International Development.
"People are igniting innovation on their own. They don't wait for external support. So, this must not be allowed to die," he said.
Mr Ali, formerly of the British charity Water Aid, said the donor community or any project should strike "a long-term partnership with Nagra Sheba to help it scale up, thus providing a key lifeline." "It (Nagar sheba) needs no hand-out, what it needs is partnership."