The Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, WSSCC has launched the Global Sanitation Fund- a new financing Mechanism for sanitation in the poor area and the poor people.
At a press briefing in Stockholm where the World Water Week is going on, Mr. Jon Lane, Executive Director of Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council said this was the first pooled global financing mechanism to increase expenditure on sanitation and hygiene.
About 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to basic sanitation. The UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without access to sanitation is the furthest from being achieved, compared with other goals.
Mr Lane said in order to help reach the goal for poor countries and regions, the WSSCC launched the Global Sanitation Fund, which is one of the major initiatives of the International Year of Sanitation 2008.
The WSSCC will work with various governments taking a transparent method to identify priority regions and help achieve the sanitation goal.
It has chosen Madagascar, Nepal and Uganda as pilot countries for concrete steps. The current fund is nearly 60 million US dollars from the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. They plan to get 100 million dollars a year.
Mr. Jean Herivelo Rakotondrainibe who is in charge of the WASH Coalition program which is sponsored by GSF and teaches children to wash hand with soap and other trainings said the program in Madagascar has been very successful and they tried to involve all sectors to make decisions. For example, they have 7 members in the government and 7 members from the non-government sectors and local chiefs. Private sector is also involved so that the decision making process is democratic and transparent , thus help eliminate corruption.
Mr Lane said their way of operating the fund is to involve outside auditing party to monitor the use of funds, thus prevent corruption.
This is just one of the positive steps towards sanitation. Also during the water week, USAID, International Water Association and Asian Development Bank signed agreement to establish an Asia-wide partnership called WaterLinks that will help provide clean drinking water and sanitation throughout the region by coordinating, promoting and aligning efforts to create Water Operators Partnerships.
This method will accelerate the delivery of safe drinking water and sanitation to Asian countries.
By Xuefei Chen People's Daily Online correspondent in Stockholm.
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