WASH News South Asia
News feed maintained by information specialists from IRC and partners.
Pakistan, Azad Kashmir: Govt schools sans toilet, drinking water
07 Jul 08
KHALID GUL, Islamabad, June 23More than 70 per cent schools in this south Kashmir district lack drinking water and toilet facilities. Out of 972 schools, 707 are without toilets while as 680 do not have a drinking water facility. Primary schools are the worst hit as out of 632, 536 are without toilet facility while [...]
India, Himachal Pradesh: award to boost sanitation campaign
07 Jul 08
The cleanest gram panchayat (local government body) at the block, district, divisional and state levels in the north-western state of Himachal Pradesh (pop. 6 million) will be awarded cash prizes ranging from Rs 100,000 to Rs 1 million by the state government every year under the “Maharishi Valmiki Sampuran Swachhata Puraskar” reward scheme. The scheme [...]
Bangladesh - Sanitation in tea gardens very poor
07 Jul 08
Safe water supply and sanitation in the tea gardens of the country is very poor, said the speakers at a consultation yesterday.Moreover, the administrative barriers make it hard to carry out development programmes there, they added.The stakeholder consultation on ‘Promotion of total sanitation in tea gardens’ was organised by NGO Forum for Drinking Water Supply [...]
India - Conversion of dry latrines into water seal latrines
07 Jul 08
The Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Smt. Meira Kumar has urged the Minister of Rural Development, Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh to take urgent steps to ensure that all dry latrines in rural areas are converted into water seal latrines by March 2009, which is also the target date for rehabilitation of remaining manual scavengers. [...]
Pakistan - World Bank Citizen Report Card on water and sanitation
05 Jul 08
KARACHI: Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Gulberg towns are best served and Gadap and Bin Qasim towns are worst served in terms of water and sanitation services.These are the findings of the Citizen Report Card on the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board that surveyed 4,500 households of nine towns under the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program South [...]
India: former scavengers take fashion show to UN Headquarters, New York
04 Jul 08
A group of Indian women, rescued by the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation from the degrading task of manually cleaning toilets, joined leading fashion models on the catwalk before representatives from more than 150 countries at UN Headquarters in New York, USA. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs invited the group [...]
India, Kerala: Chief Minister launches WASH campaign
03 Jul 08
On June 5, the World Environment Day, Kerala’s Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan launched the state-leg of the national campaign titled WASH, abbreviation for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. The year 2008 being the campaign year for sanitation, WASH aims at the improvement of water, sanitation and hygiene conditions for all.(…) “In the first phase of the [...]
India, Bangalore: Urine-treated Plants Yield Bigger Bananas
03 Jul 08
Bangalore, May 29: Nagasandra, a village 50 km from Bangalore in Doddaballapur taluk, isn’t any different from the hundreds of others surrounding it. But in a remote corner of this small village is a 1-acre banana plantation that has been part of a unique research project: a study on the effect of anthropogenic liquid waste [...]
Sri Lanka: NIRAS (Denmark) wins capacity building consultancy contract for water project
02 Jul 08
NIRAS, one of Denmark’s largest firms of consulting engineers and planners, has won a capacity building consultancy contract in the water sector in Sri Lanka, financed by Danida. NIRAS won the contract, worth DKK 7.3 million, against three Danish competitors - COWI, Grontmij-Carl Bro and Rambøll.The consultancy is linked to the Danish mixed credits portfolio [...]
ADB President Outlines Water Agenda for Asia-Pacific Region
29 Jun 08
Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda unveiled a seven-point agenda to prioritize water investments in the Asia-Pacific region in a speech held at the World Cities Summit in Singapore. Kuroda said that the ADB aims to help countries in the region boost new water investments to $20 billion to improve water security.“In our recently [...]
