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Madagascar's water supply, sanitation under-funded

Xinhua, March 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

Madagascar has allocated only 1 U.S. dollar per year per capita for water supply and sanitation while the needs of the 22 million population in the country is estimated at five U.S. dollar per capita per year, sources said.

"Madagascar is ranked the forth country in the world having the lowest rate in access to drinking water," the Chief of Communication Services under Madagascar's Ministry of Water Naly Rasoanaivo told Xinhua in an interview on Friday.

"The Millennium Development Goals have not been achieved and the target 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals on water and sanitation is even more ambitious," Rasoanaivo said.

"That's why a program called --Accelerating Sanitation and Water for All-- (ASWA) was implemented jointly by our ministry, its seven regional directions and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF)," Rasoanaivo added.

Asked about this program, the UNICEF communication officer Matthew Conway said that ASWA lasted from November 2013 to December 2015 to provide drinking water and improve sanitation in for people living in poor conditions in Madagascar.

The program, funded by the United Kingdom, allowed 278,000 people having access to drinking water and 1,350,000 others to improved sanitation, Matthew Conway added.

However, a joint monitoring program of the United Nations World Health Organization and the UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation said that only 34 percent of people in rural areas in Madagascar drank clean water, only 14 percent of them had improved sanitation, and nearly half of the population living in rural areas still practiced open-air defecation. Endit