Asia-Pacific Water Forum

Overcoming the Water Supply and Sanitation Constraints of Bangladesh

The author hinted that the biggest problem in water supply is arsenic contamination of the ground water, especially in the rural areas. About 70 out of 130 million population of the country are vulnerable to this threat. Really it is a great number! Bangaladesh declared that its country would be provided with WSS facilities by the year 2010. Hope Bangaladesh is more optimistic than UN as it expects that only half of world population would be provided with hygienic water. Over the last 3 years, the shortfall between water demand and supply in Dhaka increased from 200 million l/day to over 600 million l/day-and this gap is increasing by the day. Inspite of this fact , Bangaladesh is more confident of providing good sanitation . Really it is a marvelous expectation. Water finance is the hurdle and so massive investments are needed to achieve this expectation. Where to go for this? The involvement of NGOs in the arsenic mitigation program was a good strategy. Bangladesh also tried involving trade unions in revenue billing and collection and this proved to be very successful, to the extent that their involvement was expanded.The private initiative is universally recognized as engine of growth. Good idea of private stakeholders in public policy and schemes. There is a need for decentralization and power delegation should really formulate a separate policy for public sector commercial operation. The idea is an acceptable one for the easy operation of ngos and trade unions.
Bangaladesh is now thinking in a positive way to solve water arsenic problems and for establising WSS in the right tone.

| by Dr.P.S.Navaraj | 06.11 2007 17:13 | url: |