3,000 poor municipalities benefit from water project
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) recently reported that residents in some 3,000 municipalities in the 20 poorest provinces of the country have benefited under its Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (RWSSP).
The RWSSP is funded by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation which aims to provide safe, adequate and reliable water supply and sanitation services to selected low-income rural areas through community-based arrangements.
DILG Secretary Ronaldo Puno said in a press report, RWSSP is one of the five water supply projects being carried out by the department's Water Supply and Sanitation Program Management Office which are now in various stages of implementation.
Puno identified the other water supply project as the Local Government Unit (LGU) Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Project of the World Bank. This is a financing facility that assists the LGUs in improving and sustaining the provision of water, sanitation, drainage and other environmental services in some 250 small and medium-sized municipalities, covering some 6 million beneficiaries.
Another DILG supervised project, according to Puno, is the DILG-GTZ Water and Sanitation Program funded by the German government that aims to develop and implement strategies for sustainable water supply and sanitation as well as the protection and management of water catchment areas in the provinces of Ifugao, Isabela, Cebu and Palawan.
Puno added that under the Solar-Power Prepaid Water Project, the DILG has already released counterpart funding totaling P2.5 million to the city government of Puerto Princesa. Similar initiatives in Masinloc, Zambales and Malapascua, Cebu are in the pipeline.
So far 210 waterless areas, he said, have benefited in Metro Manila or 1,126 households under the President's Priority Project on Water of the National Anti-Poverty Commission.
"We want these projects fully implemented so that low-income households in faraway barangays can have easy and affordable access to clean drinking water", Puno said.
Meanwhile, the government expects that the upcoming years of steady growth shall be matched with basic social services aimed at lifting up the threshold of the population who live below the poverty line.
(PIA)