As many as 83% of the population in rural areas of Vietnam are expected to have access to clean water, said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dao Xuan Hoc. This is a target of this year’s national program on clean water and environmental hygiene in rural areas, which is part of phase 2 that runs from 2006 to 2010. The program is designed to provide clean water and proper sanitation to 100% of rural residents by 2010. If accomplished, the access to clean water will increase by 4%, when compared to last year’s figures. The remaining areas where clean water had not been made availed to people include the remote areas in the northwestern provinces of Ha Giang and Cao Bang and the heavily salinated land in the Mekong Delta, said Nguyen Hong Quan from the ministry’s Department of Water Resources. Australia, the Netherlands and Denmark are among the largest donors to this program. Nguyen Van Thuan, from the Australian Agency for International Development in Vietnam’s Water Program Manager said: “The main challenges were with the operation and maintenance activities. In the previous plan for the first phase (2001-2005), there was no funds provided for operations and maintenance costs.” He said, when reviewing the first phase, in many localities, there were many places where the water supply infrastructure had been finished, yet residents were not interested in applying to get connected to the pipeline. This resulted in the degradation of the infrastructure. “Promoting involvement of more diverse participants, rather than promoting State agencies, may be a good solution,” Thuan said. Deputy Minister Hoc said the ministry was establishing mechanisms that ask every economic sectors to take part in the clean water and environmental hygiene investment and development process. Last year, 2.6 million people in the rural areas gained access to clean water, which brought the total amount of people with access to clean water in the country to 79%. The budget for last year’s program activities amounted to VND5.335 trillion ($270 million), with one-fifth of those funds being provided by international aid. Currently, 59 out of 83 million people live in rural areas.
