The World Bank today approved a $150 million (Rs 698 crore) International Development Association (IDA) credit in additional financing for the ongoing Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (Jal Nirmal Project).
The credits from IDA, the World Bank’s concessionary lending arm, carry a 0.75 per cent service fee, a 10-year grace period, and a maturity of 35 years.
The Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (KRWSS), which is also called Jal Nirmal Project (JNP), is part of a long-term programme of Bank support to the government’s efforts to increase rural communities’ access to improved and sustainable drinking water and sanitation services. The credit would be utilised to cover habitation areas, which were not covered in the first phase of the project, which was approved in 2001 and ended in March 2010.
Since 1993, two participatory bank-supported projects have already helped villagers in 4,166 villages of 23 districts plan, build and operate their own water supply systems.
The additional finance of $150 million will help scale up the ongoing second KRWSS project to another 1,650 villages, allowing an additional 4 million people to secure access to efficient and reliable water supply. The project has already brought clean drinking water to about 5 million people, taking the number of households having private water supply connections from 12 per cent to 47 per cent in the project villages. The additional finance will help the government focus on improving the quality of water supply.
The Jal Nirmal Project, which was launched in April 2002, has covered 3,064 habitations of 744 gram panchayats (GPs) in the rain-fed and arid districts of Bidar, Gulbarga, Raichur, Bijapur, Bagalkot, Koppal, Gadag, Haveri, Belgaum, Dharwad and Uttara Kannada.
The first phase of Rs 997-crore project has improved rural communities’ access to potable drinking water and sanitation services in 11 districts. It has reduced, by nearly 50 per cent, water-borne diseases in select villages. Based on technical and financial criteria, nearly 85 per cent of the schemes under the project have been treated as sustainable, officials in KRWSS said.
There are 2,322 GPs (8,271 villages and 15,218 habitations) in the project area of 11 districts.
