Rapid assessment of household sanitation services, Vientiane, Lao PDR : final report for WSP

Nearly all households in the capital use on‐site facilities, there being only a very small portion of the city served by sewerage (a single sewer line discharging into a waste stabilisation pond, plus a few locations where small bore sewerage has been piloted). Households typically have a pour‐flush toilet connected to a septic tank or soak pit that could be emptied or simply replaced when full. Housing density is generally low, open defecation is rare and there are no slums, only small pockets of low‐income housing with poor sanitation, some of which have benefitted from special projects. Septic tank emptying services are widely available, with anecdotal evidence of at least twelve private contractors operating in the city. Although the above suggests that household sanitation is generally satisfactory in Vientiane, there is no substantive data available to confirm this. Sector actors were concerned with the fact that there is a lack of reliable information to guide urban sanitation planning and development. To mitigate the risk that decisionmaking will be based on simple assumptions that existing arrangements are either satisfactory or unsatisfactory, it was felt that a study focusing on household sanitation services in Vientiane capital would provide valuable information to guide both ongoing and proposed initiatives to improve services in the capital. Therefore this study was commissioned to assess some of the sometimes unsubstantiated assumptions and assertions. [authors abstract]