Hanoi has set a target that all the rural population will have access to hygienic water by 2015, of whom 60 percent will use clean water meeting the Health Ministry’s standards.

To achieve the target, the city has invested about 3.94 trillion VND (187.6 million USD) in building inter-communal clean water supply systems, communal and district level clean water supply stations and expanding the urban clean water supply network.

Over the past five years, the ratio of rural population accessing hygienic water has increased by only 3.4 percent.

As a result, only 86 percent of rural people can access to hygienic water and 33 percent of them are using water that meets the Health Ministry’s standards.

Director of the Centre for Water and Sanitation in Rural Areas Le Van Duong attributed difficulties in mobilising enough capital for clean water production projects to the low rate of rural people accessing hygienic water.

In addition, some grassroots authorities’ scant attention to clean water supplying to rural areas and lack of awareness on the issue from part of the population are behind the slow progress in implementing water supply-related projects in rural areas, he added.-VNA