Punjab all set to become first state to provide water connection and toilet for every rural household

Chandigarh, April 9, 2015: With the recent nod of World Bank (WB) to launch an ambitious project aimed at improvement of Rural Water and Sanitation Sector in the state, Punjab was all set to become the first state of the country to provide a water connection and a toilet for every rural household in the coming six years.

The WB had recently approved a $248 million (Rs. 1540 crore) loan for the $354 million (Rs. 2200 crore) ‘Punjab Rural Water and Sanitation Sector Improvement Project’ to help the state significantly improve its delivery of water and sanitation services as well as reduce open defecation to improve the quality of life in rural Punjab. The said project would include a minimum of 10 hours of water supply daily, a toilet for all those household without a toilet, sewerage systems in over 315 villages and supply safe water from surface water to over 121 villages that were currently drinking water contaminated with uranium and other heavy metals thereby leading to serious illnesses like cancer.

The project was expected to directly benefit an estimated 8.47 million rural people in Punjab, including over 4 million female beneficiaries and 2.44 million beneficiaries belonging to the scheduled castes. Pertinently, over 6,25,000 households in the state still lack toilets.  The sanitation component would provide a subsidy to every toilet-less household to construct a toilet coupled with information, education, and communication (IEC) to trigger the behavioural change necessary to achieve Open Defecation Free (ODF) status at the village level. As per the World Bank data over four million women in Punjab, who today bear the burden of securing daily water supplies and deal with poor sanitation facilities, would benefit from this project as they would have access to more reliable and better quality water supply and sanitation facilities in their own households. The project would also reduce the time spent by women in collecting water, which they could now optimally utilise in other productive ways.

The Rs 2200 crore project would be implemented over a six-year period and the World Bank would contribute Rs.1540 crore whereas the state government would give Rs.660 crore in the ratio of its share 70:30. It may be recalled that while, Punjab has highest coverage for water (95 percent) and sanitation (71.0 percent), the rural water and sanitation sector in the state still continues to face major challenges. A large number of water supply schemes were serving only a limited population with house connections. The rapidly deteriorating water quality in the state was also leading to serious health problems. Roughly 29 percent of water supply schemes face water quality issues.

It is worth mentioning that the 16th World Bank mission had earlier rated the achievements of the state under Rs. 1280 crore Punjab Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (PRWSS) project Phase-I as the best in the country as the project has not only exceeded the implementation targets under water supply component by 127%, but was also providing water connections to each household in the village and running about 50 schemes on 24x7 basis.