Vietnam Bac Giang Overcomes Limitations in Rural Clean Water Management
Vietnam’s northern province of Bac Giang strives to overcome shortcomings and limitations, improves the quality of management and utilization of rural clean water supply projects in the area to meet the needs of people.
The Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and relevant departments, sectors and localities are strengthening guidance, inspecting and supervising the assets management and utilization of rural clean water supply projects.
The department continues to urge the People's Committees of districts and enterprises that manage and utilize rural clean water supply projects to sign management and utilization contracts and approve water prices. The department also monitors and assesses the quality and operation of centralized water supply projects, considers specific repairs and upgrades or decides on liquidation plans for each project in the province.
In addition, the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development reviews the water supply zoning assigned to businesses and advises the Provincial People's Committee to adjust the water supply when arise inadequacies in order to meet the needs of clean water for households and promotes the effectiveness of the project's operations.
Districts strengthen propaganda and mobilize people to use clean water from centralized rural water supply projects; develop plans and allocate capital to maintain, repair and upgrade centralized clean water supply projects managed by the commune People's Committees, ensuring continuous clean water supply activities and sustainable environmental protection.
According to the Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Bac Giang Duong Thanh Tung, the province now has 104 rural clean water supply projects receiving investment from the state budget. Of which, the number of sustainable operating projects (the ratio between actual capacity and design capacity is over 50%) is 41 (accounting for 39.4%). The number of average operating projects is 13 (accounting for 12.5%). The number of inefficient operating projects is 11, accounting for 10.6%. The number of inactive projects is 39, accounting for 37.5%.
According to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Bac Giang, the management and utilization of rural clean water supply projects in the province in recent years still have shortcomings and limitations. Some projects were invested long ago. During the process of use, the projects have not been regularly and promptly maintained, leading to ineffective operations, and many projects are not even operating.
Some projects are assigned to enterprises to manage and then the enterprises do not use the construction's treatment system or convert them into booster stations, but use treated water from another project invested by the enterprises themselves instead, which led to an inappropriate assessment of the project's performance.
Most of the projects managed by the commune People's Committees have not approved the water price but are temporarily charging fees according to the regulations of the commune People's Committees or District People's Councils. The fee is so low that it is not enough to pay for the management, operation, maintenance, and repair of the project.
In some river water exploiting projects, no attention has been paid to the sanitation inspection of water exploitation areas. Periodic inspections of hygiene and finished water quality of many units has not been seriously implemented, especially projects assigned to the commune People's Committees for management.
Propaganda and mobilization of people to understand and use centralized clean water remains limited, so the proportion of people in the water supply area of the project using centralized clean water is still low.