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Bangladesh Water Supply and Sanitation Sub-Sector

Sector Policy Documents

Main Policy Documents of the Water Resources Sector are:

• National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (PRSP) of 2005;
• National Water Policy (NWP) of 1998;
• National Water Management Plan of 2004.
• National Policy for Arsenic Mitigation of 2004;

Main Policy Documents for the Water Supply and Sanitation Sub-Sector are:

• The National Policy for Safe Water Supply and Sanitation of 1998;
• The National WSS Sector Development Framework of 2004;
• The National WSS Sector Development Plan of 2006 including the Institutional Development Plan, Service Delivery Plan and Sector Investment Plan;
• Pro-Poor Strategy for Water Supply and Sanitation Sector of 2005;
• National Sanitation Strategy of 2005;

The National Policy for Safe Water Supply and Sanitation, 1998

The National Policy for Safe Water Supply and Sanitation 1998 is the basic policy document governing the water supply and sanitation sector.

The policy mentions that Government’s goal is to ensure that all people have access to safe water and sanitation services at an affordable cost. The policy emphasizes elements of behavioural changes and sustainability through user’s participation in planning, implementation, management and cost sharing.

National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (PRSP), 2005;

In the process of developing the National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction, 2005 the Government has acknowledged the potential of Water Supply and Sanitation issues as a sub-thematic issue under health following a civil society sector submission to the National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction in Bangladesh and increased demand from sector agencies. Since the national budget allocation and donor support will be provided as per the PRSP in the near future, the inclusion of WSS as a separate chapter will ensure adequate fund for accessible water supply and sanitation services for all in Bangladesh.   

National Water Management Plan, 2004:

The national water management plan has envisaged access to appropriate water supply and sanitation to all by 2010 and has also made a provision for waterborne sanitation and storm water drainage in major cities. Also it has proposed resource allocation to achieve time bound targets.

The National WSS Sector Development Framework (SDF), 2004:

Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has approved a Sector Development Framework (SDF) which guides planning, coordination and monitoring of all future development of activities with focus on devolution of authority to LGIs, user participation, economic pricing, public-NGO-private partnership and gender sensitivity.

Pro-Poor Strategy for Water Supply and Sanitation Sector, 2005:

The pro-poor strategy for water supply and sanitation provides operational definition of hardcore poor households, definition of basic minimum service level, targeting and organizing the hardcore poor households and mechanism for administering subsidies.

National Policy for Arsenic Mitigation, 2004;

To address the arsenic contamination of a large number of shallow tube wells the Government prepared the National Arsenic Mitigation Policy in 2004.

National Sanitation Strategy of 2005;

The National Sanitation Strategy was prepared in 2005 to address the Governments commitment to provide sanitation facilities to all by 2010.

Sanitation Related Policy Decisions, 2004:

Beginning of 2004, the Government has allocated 20% of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) fund to Upazilas for improving sanitation coverage. According to government decision, 90%of this allocation would be used to promote sanitary latrines for distribution free of charge to the hardcore poor people. The remaining 10% funds are to be used for promotional activities. In addition, Tk. 5000.00 has been allocated and distributed to each Gram Sarkar for their local development, sanitation being one of the major activities. Subsequently in January 2005, the decision has been revised to raise the fund for promotional activities from 10% to 25%.

One important aspect of the decision is that focal point of the national sanitation campaign is the Union Parishad at rural areas and in urban areas is Word of Municipalities and City-corporations. The Union Parishads have been entrusted with the task of latrine distribution and promotion. It however, remains to be seen that the hardcore poor are properly identified and subsidy is effectively used. WaterAid Bangladesh has recently done an Action Research on the use of the 20% allocations for hardcore poor in 2 Unions (one plain-land and one in CHT) and one Municipality. Results of this are now available and can be shared if needed and asked for.

Status of the Water and Sanitation Sub-Sector in Bangladesh

Water Supply

Rural Water Supply

Bangladesh has achieved a commendable success in providing access to drinking water for its rural population and by the end of the last millennium nearly 97% of the population believed to be served by about 11 million hand tube-wells.

This success, to a large extent, was attributed to the simple, robust, low cost and widely available shallow tube-well used in a vast majority of the rural areas. Moreover, most tube-wells (80-85%) were actually installed by individual households themselves with service from private sector. In these shallow tube-well areas there is about 1 tube-well for every 20 people.

However, the above high coverage figures does not reflect the fact that many areas within the country are still under or un-served, mainly for three reasons:

• Arsenic contamination in groundwater (i.e. beyond the national permissible limit of 0.05 mg/l) is estimated to have affected some 25% of all tube-wells. This has brought down the country’s rural gross coverage water supply coverage to about 74%.
• The inexpensive shallow tube-well technologies are not effective for hydro-geological reasons in mainly two areas of Bangladesh: 1) the coastal belt areas where expensive Deep Tube-well technologies are required to avoid the shallow, saline aquifers and 2) the north-west region where expensive Deep Set Pump (DSP) technologies are required to tap water from aquifers with low water table. The contribution by users and the private sector can only cover a fraction of the high cost of facilities in both these areas with the effect that people mostly are using public common tube-wells. Average one deep tube-well presently serves about 93 people and one DSP tube-well about 188 people, compared to one shallow tube-well serving only 20 people.
• Though there is high gross average coverage in most of the districts, there are many pockets, mostly of poor and disadvantaged sections of the community who do not have access to safe drinking water.

In spite of a relative high gross coverage of water supply in rural areas, this has, thus far, also not resulted in substantial improvement of health. Mortality rate of infants and children below five years are 66 and 94 deaths per 1,000 live births respectively. Water related diseases still account for majority of the deaths.

Paurashava Water Supply

Bangladesh has 308 Paurashavas (small cities). There are piped water supply systems in 102 Paurashavas.

The service level of these water supply systems is quite low with water supply limited to 2 to 12 hours per day due to insufficient funds for electricity, lack of storage to cater for the peak and the low hours and lack of production capacity. Billing and collection rates are low thus rendering services even more inadequate and requiring subsidies from Paurashava Parishads or from the central government. With the collected fees, the O & M costs can hardly be covered. No funds for the investments are available from the Paurashava. The pipe supply coverage with house connections or public taps is only is about 36% of the population in Paurashavas where pipe systems are installed. Coverage by hand tube wells in the Paurashavas is around 55% making total coverage 91%.

City Water Supply

In Dhaka City (including the paurashavas of Narayanganj and Kadamrasul in Narayanganj District) and Chittagong City the responsibility for water supply and sanitation is given to semi-autonomous Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA), which was created in 1963. These large water utilities operate the systems, collect fees and supervise projects. Dhaka WASA maintains a positive cash balance and is able to generate some investment funds, but Chittagong WASA covers its operating expenses only. Collection rates are better than in Paurashavas although experience with outsourcing has shown that improvement is still possible. In Dhaka WASA unaccounted for water stands currently at 40% and 33% in Chittagong WASA.  Most connections are metered but reliability of meters is questionable. It is estimated that the coverage with piped water supply in the WASA areas is around 57%. People in WASA areas are being served by house connections, by public taps and by private hand tube wells.

Sanitation

A nationwide survey on latrine coverage was conducted in 2003 covering both urban and rural areas. The survey revealed appallingly poor latrine coverage in the country. Only 33% of the households were found having hygienic latrines, while 25% have unhygienic latrines. About 55 million people (42% households) do not use any latrine. A brief summary of the survey results is given bellow:

The survey also showed varying level of coverage under different socio-economic and hydro-geological conditions of the country. The results of the baseline survey are extremely important and the basis for designing future interventions.

Considering the required annual growth rate of 12% to achieve 100% sanitation coverage, the task ahead is extremely challenging.

Conventional sewer systems are absent in all urban areas except Dhaka city. Only 20% of the population of Dhaka is served by an expensive sewer network, the rest use septic tanks, pit latrines, unhygienic latrines or none at all. The sanitation conditions of urban slums are deplorable.

The National Sanitation Secretariat is updating the information on sanitation and based on their progress reports the sanitation coverage is briefed bellow:

Above table shows an annual increase rate of 21.67% for rural, 8.75% in Paurashavas and 6.33% in city corporations with respect to sanitation.

Based on the report of 2005 the sanitation coverage is 60% in Chittagong WASA area and 82% in Dhaka WASA area.

However, the recent survey by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics supported by Unicef indicates clearly that not all sanitation units included in the above figures are sanitary facilities.

Institutional framework

As regards water supply and sanitation sub-sector the Local Government Division (LGD) is responsible for overall planning, identification of investment projects and coordination of activities of agencies under it (viz. DPHE, LGED, WASAs) and local government bodies, private sector, NGOs and CBOs (Community Based Organizations). But each of the relevant organizations/institutions is responsible for its own activities. To coordinate, monitor and evaluate the activities of the sector and to determine future work program Local Government Division has constituted a National Forum for Water Supply and Sanitation with representatives from relevant organizations.

However, LGD is making planning and monitoring for projects financed by the ADP budget only and consequently, GoB financed projects are not coordinated with projects financed by NGOs and by the private sector. Different NGOs are financing more than 20% of all WSS sub-sector projects.  

Except for Dhaka City (including the paurashavas of Narayanganj and Kadamrasul) and Chittagong City DPHE is responsible for water supply and sanitation services of the whole country. In urban areas DPHE is responsible for assisting Paurashavas and City Corporations (except Dhaka and Chittagong as well as Narayanganj and Kadamrasul) through infrastructure development and technical assistance as may be necessary. Besides, both in urban and rural areas, DPHE will increasingly collaborate with private sector, NGOs and CBOs.

LGED undertakes also water supply and sanitation related activities particularly in foreign aided projects where it is required as components of overall infrastructure packages. In such project based cases LGED, in coordination with DPHE, assist the concerned local government institutions in the implementation and provide technical assistance. 

Relevant WASAs are responsible for water supply and sanitation in Dhaka City (including the paurashavas of Narayonganj and Kadamrasul) and Chittagong City. Involvement of private sector in these activities are encouraged and examined.

Local Government bodies like Zila Parishads, Upazila Parishads, Union Parishads and Gram Parishads were gradually provided with more scope to contribute in the activities of this sub-sector.

Enabling working environment has been created and necessary support has been provided to facilitate increased participation of the private sector, NGOs, and CBOs in the activities of the sector both in rural and urban areas.

Private and NGO investment has been encouraged in manufacturing, sale and distribution of different types of tube-wells, sanitary latrines etc. They are also encouraged to participate in the installation of piped water system where feasible.