Hanoi has set a target that all citizens will have access to clean, drinkable tap water by 2020, affirmed Chairman of the city People’s Committee Nguyen Duc Chung at the recent meeting with local authorities and businesses on measures to develop the city’s water system.
Chairman of the city People’s Committee Nguyen Duc Chung made speech at the meeting
The Hanoi's leader stressed that the city considers supplying clean water to locals a way to improve living standards. He urged water supply plants to apply high technology by 2018.
To encourage businesses to invest in water supply in rural areas, the city will help connect them with banks, while allocating up to 1 trillion VND in soft loans to assist the firms, especially those investing in projects in My Duc, Me Linh, Chuong My, Thuong Tin and Phu Xuyen districts, he said.
At the meeting, he also listened to businesses’ difficulties and sought measures to support them. He also asked for the speeding up of construction of new water plants and the expansion of existing ones to provide water to locals in wider areas. As part of efforts to call for business engagement in water supply, the city has allowed 10 investors to implement 20 projects in 75 communes with more than 180,000 households and 730,000 people.
Hanoi considered clean water supply as one of the measures to improve people’s living quality; therefore, water plants must promptly research and supplement filtering technologies, and submit the results to the city in August for further implementation in 2018. Water enterprises must review their water supply system to avoid loss of water, change or improve technologies to regularly wash the water supply pipelines, build projects on consolidating apparatus and enhancing management to avoid loss and prevent corruption.
The Chairman also held conversation with enterprises and investors to help them ease difficulties and encourage investment in the key projects and areas. He requested the Department of Construction to receive project dossiers of Ha Nam Clean Water, and cooperate with Phu Xuyen suburban district and Department of Finance to speed up the progress of water supply project in Phu Xuyen. He urged the Clean Water No. 2 Company to cooperate with Soc Son suburban district to supply water to the people in Nam Son commune. Along with construction of new water plants, current plants shall strive to increase their capacity, expand water supply network, and put smart water meters into use.
According to the report of Department of Construction, over the past time, Hanoi has called for the private sector’s investment in an effort to improve rural water supply, and urged the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to finalize project on assigning rural water supply plants to enterprises or cooperatives. The city gives approval in principle for 10 investors to implement 20 rural water supply projects, which will provide water to over 180,000 households in 75 communes. Once being completed, around 54% of people in rural areas will have clean water. Several of them have been implemented since June of 2016, offering clean water to around 15,000 households with 60,000 people.
Source: hanoitimes.com.vn