IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre signs MoU with India’s premier civil services training and research centre

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, The Netherlands, and India’s National Institute of Administrative Research (NIAR) are joining forces on capacity development and action research.

On 18 December 2012 the two institutes signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in New Delhi in the presence of the Secretary of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Mr. Pankaj Jain IAS.

NIAR is the research wing of India’s premier training centre for civil servants, the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) based in Mussoorie. It manages various centres of excellence within LBSNAA and is also a Government of India (GoI) recognised key resource centre for rural drinking water.

The MoU was signed by NIAR Director General Mr. Kush Verma IAS, and IRC Manager, South Asia & Latin America Team, Joep Verhagen on behalf of the IRC Director Nico Terra. Also present at the function were T.M. Vijay Bhaskar IAS, Joint Secretary, Government of India, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Dr Kurian Baby IAS, India Country Director and Senior Programme Officer – South Asia, IRC and Dr. B.S. Bisht, Associate Professor & Nodal Officer, National Key Resource Centre (Water & sanitation), NIAR-LBSNAA, Mussoorie.

The MoU envisages collaboration on:

1. training and capacity building in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector
2. networking with other national / state training institutes
3. integrating WASH training programmes with LBSNAA academic programs
4. joint action research programmes

Speaking on the occasion, Pankaj Jain IAS, Secretary, GoI expressed the hope that the MoU would lead to constructive cooperation between the two centres of excellence, in designing curricula, improving contents, building capacities and supporting action research leading to sustainable WASH service delivery in the country.

For more information contact: Dr. V. Kurian Baby, India Country Director and Senior Programme Officer, South Asia, IRC, e-mail: kurian@irc.nl

Bangladesh: government cuts water and sanitation budget by US$ 121 million

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

Asia Water Week 2013, Manila, Philippines, 14-15 March 2013

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will invite around 400-500 participants from its stakeholder groups to discuss water sector issues, technologies, and emerging priorities around the theme “Securing Water for All”.

Topics: climate change, water-food-energy nexus, disaster management, civil society, financing, leveraging, private sector participation, governance, water supply and sanitation, water resources and environment, agriculture/irrigation, regional and national focus groups; and technical presentations.

The ADB Water Prize 2013 award will also be presented.

For more information go to: www.adb.org/news/events/asia-water-week-2013

China: US$ 27 billion for safe water for all rural areas by 2015

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.

India, Delhi: how sexual violence against women is linked to water and sanitation

Girls under ten being have been raped while on their way to use a public toilet, say women living in Delhi’s slums. In one slum, boys hid in toilet cubicles at night waiting to rape those who entered. These are some of the incidents mentioned in a recent briefing note [1] based on research supported by WaterAid and the DFID-funded SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity).

The link between a lack of access to water and sanitation facilities and sexual violence against women is not well known and to date has received insufficient attention. The briefing note highlights this link within the context of urban slums in Delhi, and suggests how this problem can be addressed.

[1] Lennon, S. 2011. Fear and anger : perceptions of risks related to sexual violence against women linked to water and sanitation in Delhi, India. (SHARE briefing note). London, UK, SHARE, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 15 p. Available at: www.shareresearch.org/Resource/Details/violenceagainstwomen_india

Related news:

• Insecurity and indignity : women’s experiences in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, E-Source, 23 Jul 2010
• Ghana: stop violence against girls – build school toilets, E-Source, 21 Sep 2009

Related web sites:

• SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity)
• WSSCC – Gender and WASH
• IRC – Gender and Equity

China to ensure safe rural drinking water

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

Philippines: toolbox for rural water utilities launched

The Philippines and the World Bank have created the Rural Water Supply (RWS) manual for small-scale providers. Photo: Department of Interior & Local Government(DILG).

The Philippine government – together with the World Bank, the United Nations through the Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund (MDG-F) and other development partners – have launched a ‘local water governance toolbox’. The toolbox is aimed at small-scale water service providers (SSWPs) with less than 5,000 connections.

Otherwise known as “Tubig Yaman,” this new set of manuals and knowledge products on water and sanitation was unveiled at the ‘Water Knowledge Fair’ held in Manila in celebration of World Water Day. The manuals present a coherent set of guidelines that hopefully will help overcome operational difficulties and sustainability issues, which occur due to flaws in design assumptions, deficiencies in construction, and poor knowledge on operation and maintenance.

Bangladesh: WaterAid gets Swiss and Swedish grants for WASH projects

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.

Tuvalu: state of emergency declared due to water shortages

The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu (pop. 10,544) has declared a state of emergency due to severe water shortages on 28 September 2011 after existing desalination plants broke, exacerbating an already dire situation. The Australian, New Zealand and U.S. Defence forces – together with the Red Cross – have set up emergency desalination plants on two of the country’s nine islands.

A Red Cross situation report said the former British colony relied mostly on rainwater, which had been scarce this year because of a La Nina weather pattern across the Pacific.

The government of Tuvalu said the water crisis was likely to last until at least January 2012, when there’s more chance of heavy rain.

For the latest updates on the Tuvalu water crisis visit ReliefWeb

Source: AFP / New Age, 03 Oct 2011 ; ABC / ReliefWeb, 17 Oct 2011 ; Drought – Information Bulletin n° 2, IFRC / ReliefWeb, 14 Oct 2011 ; ABC / ReliefWeb, 14 Oct 2011

India, Karnataka: communication campaign helps realise sustainable water supply in small towns

When three small towns in the state of Karnataka, India attempted to provide continuous water supply to their citizens through a public-private partnership, they faced disbelief even ridicule. A sustained and strategic communication campaign over several years finally enabled the Karnataka Urban Water Supply Improvement Project (KUWASIP) to succeed with people’s support. Now, the citizens of these three towns – Hubli-Dharwad, Gulbarga and Begaum – benefit from 24/7 water supply through the .

This best practice was produced as a short movie titled “Overcoming Resistance and Initiating Change through Communications” by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in partnership with the Administrative Staff College of India and is part of a training curriculum for city managers and policy-makers.

KUWASIP was jointly funded by the World Bank and the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC). In 2009, KUIDFC received a National Urban Water Award for the project in the category

Related web site: KUIDFC – Karnataka Urban Water Supply Improvement Project (KUWASIP)