Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Cambodia hosts regional meeting on improving rural water services to the poor

May 24, 2010
Xinhua

Cambodia on Monday hosts a regional meeting on how to improve rural water services at scale both in policy and practices in the region.

In a statement released Monday at the opening of the three-day meeting in Phnom Penh, it said that the main aims of the meeting is to bring together regional practitioners to discuss on how to improve sustainable rural water services at scale, to debate and analyze lessons learned and to identify common principles to improve both policy and practice in the region.

Thirty senior practitioners from the sector, both from governments and non-government organizations from Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Vietnam and Timor-Leste are to discuss strategies for improving the accountability of service providers to consumers; to apply technical standards; to maximize the potential of the private sector; or to start planning and costing of the full life cycle of infrastructure.

The meeting is organized by SNVNetherlands Development Organization in collaboration with Cambodia's Ministry of Rural Development and IRC (International Red Cross).

It said that after years of working in the sector, thousands of Rupees, Dollars, Dongs, Bhats, etc. have been invested over the years in new system construction, which in many cases is not properly maintained or properly repaired and which often fails far before the design-life of systems.

The statement added recognizing the problems. SNV and IRC have carried out studies in Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam to describe the existing Service Delivery Models (SDM) of rural water supply in these countries.

And it is expected that the main output of the workshop will be the learning between the different participants on the subject of water service delivery models and practices in Asia.

And the second important output will be to reflect on entry points for change and how change processes can be facilitated in countries.

The meeting also starts with field visits of 30 senior practitioners to Cambodia's Takeo and Kandal provinces, southern parts of Phnom Penh.

Irrigation network and clean water supply are still shortage in Cambodia, and thus many Cambodian villagers dig their own water wells to get water for their daily consumption.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cambodian Gov't must help bringing cleaned and running waters to the poors in the rural area throughout cambodia...i urged our government to please help our poors people with affordable electricity also..!! don't pay attentions toward Thailand, we need to taken care our own problems at HOME!!

Anonymous said...

Cleaned and Running waters are the big problems in cambodia, alot of people got sick...because of dirty and contaminated, polluted waters...

Anonymous said...

Uhmmmmmm! For some fucken 30 years and the idea of clean water and proper sewage system just pop in their brain! I am telling the stupid Cambodian government right now that soon or later it will affect Cambodian tourist industry if the clean water is not solved!

The clean water move in and the dirt water move out simple as that!

Anonymous said...

I was in phnom penh, and those bottle waters"holy water? Teuk Sot?" are scaring me...? i usually drank alot of cold beer instead...

Anonymous said...

Many of you are absolutely right Dudes, attention has been diverted to the West, Thailand, to achieve its devastating agendas "Make Cambodians ignore their realistic suffering and domestic problems including joblessness, high rate of inflation, income reduction, land grabbing, shortage of food, diseases, migration to other neighboring countries, border issues with the East, so on and so forth.
If everyone just focuses their attentions to those Thai issues and spend hours watching Political propaganda on the shit channel, you'll still be going no where to break your poverty pot, and those powerful corrupt elites will keep getting richer and richer, staying longer and longer in power till your doomsday! ;-(

Anonymous said...

Too much corruptions and corrupted people in cambodia... especially with all of those Gov't provincial officials, they done nothing to help solve these problems, all they did was, rebuilding their own villas, upgraded their second and third mistress home instead, the money were sending out, but those provincial Gov't did not do anything..?? not just Batttambang province alone? they asking peole to pay for running waters?

Anonymous said...

i think one important issue is clean water supply in cambodia because without it, a lot of people got sick from water related consumption, etc... also, emphasize or education citizens on the concept of hygiene, whether personal hygiene or/and food preparation hygiene, etc... think about it, how one get sick or ill, etc, can be preventable by method of hygienic, etc... it starts with handwashing, showering, proper deposable of wastes, refuse, etc... these many small step all can help to make a real difference in health, etc., really! people, especially rural folks must be educated to be aware of this method, etc... it's for their own health, their children's and family's health, etc..., really!