PHNOM PENH: Cambodia aims to have clean water supply and sanitation services throughout the country by 2025 as the government hopes to promote better health and nutrition among its population.
Currently more than 80 per cent of the country is already receiving clean water supply and the government hopes to ramp it up to 90 per cent next year before reaching 100 per cent in 2025.
Ministry of Rural Development secretary of state Chrun Theravat said the clean water supply project comes under its National Action Plan on Rural Water Supply and Sanitation, which is now in its second phase.
According to The Phnom Penh Post, he said the National Strategic Plan on Water Supply and Rural Sanitation 2014-2025 aimed to improve sustainability in providing rural water, health and sanitation services to promote health and nutrition.
"As of the first quarter of this year, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the coverage rate of access to rural water and sanitation has increased to more than 80 per cent," he said.
Theravat recalled that in 2000, the government had set the Cambodian Millennium Development Goal 2015 target for rural water supply of 50 per cent and sanitation of 30 per cent.
He said water supply and sanitation achieved 53 per cent and 52.9 per cent respectively by that year.
In 2014, the government set a new target of 60 per cent for both rural water supply and sanitation in the Strategic Plan for Rural Development 2014-2018 and exceeded the target by increasing the coverage to more than 70 per cent by 2018.
The ministry said that over the last five years, it has built 11,741 wells of all kinds, repaired 1,585 damaged wells and rehabilitated and constructed 1,271 community ponds.
It has also constructed 2,420 rainwater reservoirs that were 3 to 5 cubic metres and had 10,000 litre capacities. Apart from these, the ministry had distributed 145,865 large earthenware storage jars for water to people and built 200 tube water distribution systems in villages.
The ministry had also constructed 67 water stations for communities to fill 20 litre water containers; built 330 water producing stations and 10,470 water treatment systems.
It further made more than 81,000 20-litre containers from concrete and sand filters; provided 22,912 tanks to households for providing drinking water; built 2,000 tanks in 33 schools, 128 small irrigation systems and 13 irrigation pumping stations; and educated more than 2.6 million people on the safe use of clean water.
According to Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) director-general Long Naro, starting 2021, the PPWSA planned to invest with development partners to improve the water supply to the people to ensure that there is no shortage of clean water.
He said the government had included 20 communes as part of the capital's territory, where the PPWSA currently supplied water to an area of 670 sq km.
"This was like Phnom Penh had one cup of water which needed to be shared with an additional 20 new communes."
Naro said the PPWSA currently has the capacity to produce about 60,000 cubic metres of clean water per day. We have determined that people in the city would have enough clean water to use from year to year," he said.
He added that it took three years to finish the construction of each project which led to the problem of water shortages while implementing the project from 2018 to 2021.