Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Agriculture andRural Development Hoang Van Thang said clean water management in rural areasstill faces challenges such as rising population, worsening water environmentpollution, climate change and poor State management on clean water.
Director General of the Directorate of Water Resources NguyenVan Tinh said over the past years, the State, international organisations andpeople nationwide have made important contributions to rural water supply andimproving people’s health.
With the support of the United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) over the past four decades, the rate of rural dwellers accessing cleanwater has soared from 36 percent in 1999 to 88.5 percent now. Roughly 44percent of rural residents (over 28 million) have accessed water fromconcentrated water stations and the remaining from household-scale works.
At present, there are 16,300 water supply works nationwidein service of 44 percent of the rural population, 5,653 of which work stably,35,552 operate inefficiently and over 2,000 fail to work, affecting about800,000 people, or 1.25 percent of the rural population.
As of late 2016, the rate of people accessing water fromsmall-scale works accounted for 56.55 percent of the country’s population,mostly in the Central Highlands (75.6 percent) and the southeast (35.3percent).
Tinh pointed out shortcomings in the process of fulfillinggoals in the national strategy on water supply and rural hygiene until 2020 andthe United Nations Millennial Development Goals on rural water supply,including slow enforcement of policies and private involvement in water supplyworks, yet-to-meet-demand planning on rural water supply in localities, limitedpublic awareness of the effort due to inefficient communications and climatechange hurting water quality and reserves.
The meeting reviewed mechanisms, policies and privateinvolvement in rural water supply as well as management on community-basedwater supply works.
It set the goal of supplying clean water to 90 percent ofrural residents by 2020 and 90-95 percent during 2020-2030 period.-VNA