The Mekong Delta Province of Soc Trang plans to spend VND60 billion ($3.16 million) this year to bring clean water to more than 20,000 poor Khmer households. To Ngoc Tuan, deputy head of the provincial Agriculture and Rural Development Department, said Soc Trang has been implementing a program in all communes to support poor Khmer residents access clean water, and this has already benefited many households. The province has also co-operated with non-government organization CARE International to carry out a project supporting people in areas facing a serious shortage of clean water, with thousands of bore wells, jars and tanks to store rain water. The rate of residents having access to clean water in the province was about 90%. The province would strive to raise it to 95% in urban areas and 88% in rural area this year, Tuan said. The Khmer ethnic minority, who account for more than 30% of the province's population, has been facing severe water shortages because of drought. Like many other residents, they had to buy clean water at very high prices of up to VND60,000 per a cubic meter in the dry season in some areas. The situation resulted from the uneven distribution of water sources in the Delta, both in place and time, according to the National Centre for Rural Water Supply and Environment Sanitation, which noted that about 20% of total delta areas frequently faced drought and was intruded by saline water. However, Soc Trang has established clean water supply systems in all of its districts and communes, even in remote areas, bringing fresh water to hundreds of thousands of families in the province. With a capacity of 40 cubic meters per hour, the water supply station in My Tu District's Thuan Hung Commune, for instance, provides fresh water to more than 1,000 households, mostly Khmer. The province has also built water supply facilities in the coastal communes of Vien Binh and Vien An in Tran De District, bringing fresh water to more than 65% of households there.
