International Development: The Asian Development Bank "water for all farce"

A study by the Asian Development Bank found that approximately 750 million people in Asia's rural areas and another 100 million in urban areas, still have no access to safe drinking water. In addition.sanitation is needed for 1.75 billion people in rural areas and 300 million in urban areas.

The findings have forced the ADB to call on experts to review its five-year-implementation of its "water-for-all" policy which has been implemented in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and the Philippines.

Instead of improving the situation, the policy which was approved and implemented in 1991, appears to have made things worse with case studies showing the policy deprived the poor of water and forced up water rates.

The Manila Standard Today reports that Hemantha Withanage, executive director of the NGO Forum on ADB said that, "It was doomed to fail because the water policy was flawed from the start".

The policy is based on producing water through privatization with governments granting concessions to the private sector. The Asian Development Bank provided the loans to the companies. In the Philippines a company called Lopezes was granted the concession - a company that declared bankruptcy. The concession of course helped the company get out of debt.

Hemantha Withanage, said that in Nepal, people were made to pay 600 rupees per month but the average monthly income is only 300 rupees. This is in a country where the ADB had promised to cover the full cost of water services of the people who cannot afford water.