Five-year initiative will switch 24 million households from latrines to toilets
The central government will roll out a major programme over the next five years to improve health-related infrastructure in the countryside and upgrade sanitation for the 900 million rural residents.
Under the Billion Farmers Health Promotion Plan announced yesterday, 24 million extra rural households will be able to dispense with latrines and sanitation barrels by 2010 and use toilets for the first time, leaving 35 per cent of the rural population to make the switch.
More than half of the toilets will be connected to eco-friendly treatment systems such as septic tanks and methane compost pools.
The blueprint also plans to ensure 16 per cent of rural residents have access to sewage-treatment systems to generate methane that can be siphoned off and used as fuel. Also, 71 per cent of rural people will be given running water - up from 61 per cent last year.
But the plan could be difficult to realise. Data from the Ministry of Water Resources indicates that as of late 2004, more than 323 million rural residents, or 34 per cent of the total rural population, did not have access to regular supplies of safe drinking water. And a survey conducted last year by the State Council maintains that as little as 29 per cent of the nation's population has running water.
The campaign, a joint effort by the health, education and agriculture ministries and the State Council's poverty-relief office, will also include basic health-care courses at rural schools to educate at least 80 per cent of children.
