Govt undertakes project for safe drinking water in rural areas

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With a view to increasing people's access to safe drinking water free from arsenic and pathogen in rural communities, the government has undertaken a project titled 'Bangladesh Water Supply Programme Project (BWSPP)' with assistance of the World Bank (WB), reports UNB.
The project is piloting among other innovative measures like the small-scale piped water in villages to shift households from arsenic contaminated tube-wells through local public private partnership model involving private sponsors.
The BWSP project is strongly focused on rural and urban poor, helping them to access to arsenic and pathogen free water in sufficient quantities, an official of the WB has said, mentioning that under the project the WB is providing the financial assistance to the government as "grants not loan."
With the help of the project, now 21 villages throughout the country are enjoying access to safe water through small-scale piped water provision. Out of 21 schemes, four schemes are now providing water supply to village inhabitants while the rest 17 schemes are under implementation. Typically, a rural piped water scheme supports a village with up to 1000 to 1400 households.
For each of the schemes, the WB grant covers 70 per cent of the cost and the remaining 30 per cent is borne by private or NGO financing that is recovered from the revenue earnings over an 18 year operational period.
Other than rural piped water scheme, the BWSP project is also helping to expand and rehabilitate water supply system in 24 selected municipalities as well as facilitating to set up deep tube-wells in different parts of the country including the cyclone Sidr/Aila affected districts.
Besides, the project is piloting arsenic mitigation activities through modified institutional arrangement involving communities and local government institutions to respond to the arsenic crisis through awareness building, training and management of arsenic mitigation activities in hot-spot unions of three upazilas of Munshiganj district.
Under this pilot component, Ward Arsenic Mitigation Water User Group was formed to identify and plan low cost options to provide sustainable supplies of arsenic-safe water.