12.1.1  Duties of a sanitary technician

Carrying out inspections, recording data and, importantly, any follow-up with further analysis are important functions of the sanitary technician. In many parts of the world, the sanitary technician reports to a District Water Surveillance Coordinator or similar position. The duties of a sanitary technician in Ethiopia might include the following:

• carrying out routine (for instance, weekly) monitoring of water sources and distribution systems
• checking and recording chlorine residuals on the spot, and sampling from sites showing low levels (such as 0.1 mg l^–1 free chlorine) for bacteriological analysis
• transporting samples to the appropriate laboratory
• entering analytical results in surveillance reports and submitting weekly reports to the District Water Surveillance Coordinator
• informing the Water Surveillance Coordinator of high-risk zones – such as those where water pressure is low, leakage high, the results of bacteriological tests bad or standpipes are used – as soon as they are identified, and indicating by appropriate means any advice to be given to the community in an emergency
• intensifying the monitoring of high-risk water supply zones
• carrying out special sampling programmes in peri-urban and urban areas unserved by piped systems and preparing reports on them
• periodically providing samples to the provincial laboratory for chemical analysis and obtaining the results for inclusion in the district archive
• maintaining a register of all major sources of pollution of water resources and carrying out periodic inspections of these resources
• taking samples of water from urban water sources and sending them to the appropriate laboratory for full analysis
• keeping and updating an inventory of all water sources and their location, together with a sanitation inventory
• preparing a monthly summary of all sanitary inspections, including the advice provided on remedial action, and sending this summary to the District Water Surveillance Coordinator
• notifying the District Water Surveillance Coordinator of high-risk facilities, and requesting support from them for follow-up inspection and analysis.

There need to be standard procedures for carrying out sanitary inspections. In this study session you will consider three selected examples from WHO guidance to illustrate the principles and the sort of questions that are involved.