IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:
Faecal sludge secondary treatment technologies for challenging settings
This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.
The planned duration of the faecal sludge research project will be 18 months.
The Bangladesh government has reduced its allocation for water and sanitation by around 10 billion taka (US$ 121 million) in the proposed 2012-13 budget. This is 29 per cent less than in 2011-2012. Just two months earlier at the SWA High Level Meeting in Washington, DC, the government had committed to increase the allocation for sanitation and water supply by 50 per cent. [1]
Speaking at a press conference in the capital Dhaka, WaterAid country representative Md Khairul Islam said that the government should raise the water and sanitation allocation and bridge the disparity between urban and rural people.
Economist Abul Barkat, chief researcher at the Human Development Research Centre, criticised the current development budget for being heavily urban biased, with 90 per cent going to urban areas (including 52 per cent to the cities of Dhaka and Chittagong) and 10 per cent to rural areas.
Both Khairul and Barkat rejected finance minister AMA Muhith’s claim, made in his budget speech on 7 June, that Bangladesh had the highest sanitation coverage – 91 per cent – in South Asia [2]. The two experts said the real figure was only 60 per cent [3], while Sri Lanka has achieved 92 per cent in terms of improved sanitation.
[1] Statement of Commitments by the Government of Bangladesh Sanitation and Water for All Second High Level Meeting, 20th April 2012, Washington D.C. Download full text
[2] Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Budget Speech 2012-13, Daily Star, 07 Jun 2012
[3] According to the latest figures from UNICEF/WHO, in 2010 only 56 per cent of the Bangladeshi population has access to improved sanitation (Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update)
Related news: Bangladesh: WaterAid gets Swiss and Swedish grants for WASH projects, E-Source, 27 December 2011
Related web site: WASHwatch.org - Bangladesh
Source: New Age, 13 Jun 2012
Posted in Bangladesh, Financing, Sanitation, Statistics, Water supply
Tagged source_publish
Photo: Ministry of Water Resources
Everyone in rural areas will have access to safe drinking sources by 2015, reaffirmed China’s minister of water resources Chen Lei. He was speaking on 25 April 2012 at a bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.
Chen Lei, minister of water resources. Photo: China Daily
At the session, the minister presented at report on rural water resources, which stated that government would prioritise piped water systems, including the extension of urban water supply networks to rural areas.
A model where public funds provide the back-end and private funds provide the front-end can fill the gap in sanitation financing in India, writes Anupam Tyagi from the International Management Institute in the Economic Times of February 9th, 2012.
According to a recent report by Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), the lack of adequate sanitation in India resulted in an annual loss of $53.8 billion ($161 billion in purchasing power parity, or PPP) or $48 per capita ($144 in PPP) in 2006, the year of evaluation in the report. This was equivalent to 6.4% of GDP in 2006.
Most of these losses were related to health (71.7%; $38.5 billion), and mostly concentrated in children below five years. Other quantified economic losses relate to getting access to cleaner drinking water, time losses from not having access to sanitation, and tourism-related losses.
Posted in Financing, India, Sanitation
Tagged private sector participation, public-private partnerships
The State Council of China has passed a five-year plan aimed to provide access to safe drinking water for 298 million rural residents from 2011-2015.
A total of 114,000 rural schools, and nearly 80 per cent of the rural population will have access to safe drinking water through centralized water supply facilities.
In China’s 11th Five-Year Plan period from 2006-2011, 105 billion yuan (US$ 16.6 billion) was spent to provide safe drinking water for 210 million rural inhabitants.
Source: Xinhua, China Daily, 21 Mar 2012
Posted in China, Financing, School sanitation, Water supply
Tagged rural schools, rural water supply
WaterAid has signed funding agreements with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) for two WASH projects in Bangladesh.
Photo: WaterAid/ Abir Abdullah & ASM Shafiqur Rahman
SDC and WaterAid signed a grant agreement on 30 November 2011 for a 316 million Taka (US$ 3.84 million) three year rural WASH programme. SDC will provide 265.5 million Taka (US$ 3.23 million), and WaterAid the rest. If successful, SDC will extend support for another 3 years.
Most of the funding will go the ‘Promotion of water supply, sanitation and hygiene in hard -to-reach areas of rural Bangladesh’ project, which aims to provide safe drinking water to 500,000 rural people, latrines to 1.3 million and hygiene education to another 1 million people. WaterAid’s inclusion and climate change programmes will also benefit.
Posted in Bangladesh, Financing, Hygiene promotion, On-site sanitation, Rural WASH, Urban WASH, Water supply
Tagged SDC, Sida, WaterAid Bangladesh
Why do families build toilets? If the family tradition for many generations has been to defecate in the open – using local woods or accepted sites, then what is the incentive to make a break and opt for a toilet instead?
Concern for daughters and for elderly relatives are two factors often mentioned by families as motivating factors, especially as ‘safe’ places to defecate outside disappear.
Posted in Financing, Gender, India, On-site sanitation
Tagged Andhra Pradesh, subsidies
The government’s subsidy policy for sanitation needs to be more effective and more money should be allocated if Bangladesh is to meet is target of sanitation for all’ by 2013, experts say.
This is the conclusion of a study conducted among 21,121 households by the Human Development Research Centre (HDRC) with the support of WaterAid, UNICEF, and the Ministry of Local Government Division.
Economist Abul Barakat, who led the research team, said a Union Parishad, the lowest tier of the local government, receives Tk 145,000 [US$ 1,910] while a Pourashabha or municipality gets Tk 292,000 [US$ 3,840] a year in sanitation subsidy. “But the allocation is not properly utilised.”
Posted in Bangladesh, Financing, On-site sanitation
Tagged household latrines, Human Development Research Centre, subsidies, UNICEF, WaterAid
As part of the new Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for 2011-2013 for Cambodia, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is planning a US$ 27 million loan and a US$ 800,000 technical assistance grant for the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation III project.
Source: ADB Country Operations Business Plan : Cambodia 2011–2013. June 2011. Download full plan ; ADB, Cambodia Announce $500 Million Three-Year Partnership Strategy, ADB, 07 Jul 2011
Posted in Cambodia, Financing, Rural WASH
Tagged Asian Development Bank, rural sanitation, rural water supply
A US bottled water exporter that had enjoyed a de facto tax free status in the Pacific island nation of Fiji since 1995, has finally been forced to pay up.
Once dubbed as “bottled insanity” by environmentalists, FIJI Water has been linked to tax evasion, political intrigue, and greenwashing.
Water Resource Tax
Fiji earned a record high 4.4 million Fiji dollars (US$ 2.5 million) in the first four months of 2011 from the Water Resource Tax imposed on bottled water companies. According to FGB News this is thanks to the first payment since the Water Resource Tax came into effect by Fiji’s largest bottled water exporter – FIJI Water.
The total amount in water taxes collected in 2009 and 2010 was only 295,000 Fiji dollars (US$ 166,000) and 469,000 Fiji dollars (US$ 265,000) respectively.
In 2010, FIJI Water threatened to shutdown operations after the government increased the water extraction tax from one third of a cent per litre to 15 Fiji cents (8.5 US dollar cents) a litre. The tax only applies to companies bottling more than 3.5 million litres per month and FIJI Water happened to be the only company that met this requirement. While the company was able, in 2008, to thwart an attempt by the government to impose a similar but higher water tax of 20 Fijian cents per litre, it finally agreed to pay up in 2010.
Investigative journalists at Mother Jones have been reporting on FIJI Water since 2009
ADB Water for All Asia
