Assessment of Water Quality and Sanitation Systems in Urban Slums: A Case Study of Rajshahi City Corporation, Bangladesh

Over the past few decades, Rajshahi City slum population has grown as a result of the city's promise to provide jobs for the underprivileged in the surrounding area. Thousands upon thousands of poor, helpless people are pouring into cities in search of work. Due to the involvements of the government, RCC, and other national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the slums are getting access to pure drinking water supply, although these are still insufficient. The study's objectives are to evaluate the drinking water quality in a few chosen Rajshahi city slums, as well as to examine the current water distribution and sanitation systems. Every slum home (8 slums) completed a questionnaire survey to provide data for the study. In this cross-sectional study conducted in randomly selected slums, color, pH, TS, TDS, turbidity, and electric conductivity were measured in drinking water in the laboratory. Twenty water samples (randomly chosen based on ownership, such as singly, jointly, or City Corporation provided) have been taken from the research area in all, with tubewells providing the majority of them. The survey found that most slum dwellings employ water seal latrines for waste disposal and tube-well water for drinking. There are somewhat hygienic pit and water seal latrines. These could contaminate groundwater, depending on the characteristics of the soil and the distance between the latrines and water sources. Drinking water at sample sites was slightly acidic (pH 5.7-6.8). Turbidity varies from 0.28 to 21.7 NTU, conductivity varies from 300 to 1300 μS/cm, TDS varies from 200 to 700 ppm, and TS varies from 200 to 2200 ppm. This paper concludes that awareness raising on physical contents in drinking water at the household level is required to improve public health.