Season's Greetings & Year 2015 Progress at Glance!

RWSSP-WN II Team wishes

Happy Holidays to all its partners, stakeholders and friends!

With warm thanks for successful year 2015 - this has been great year especially for sanitation!

On behalf of the RWSSP-WN II team I would like to thank all our governmental and non-governmental stakeholders for their cooperation! The year 2015 has been a tragic year for Nepal with the earthquake and now ongoing protests that have resulted in lack of construction materials, fuel and other basic items. RWSSP-WN II contributed a team of three experts with a driver and a vehicle to support the Nepal government led Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA). 

2015 was particularly good year for sanitation, with three districts declaring themselves as Open Defecation Free: Nawalparasi (30.06.2015), Gulmi (11.07.2015) and Rolpa (24.12.2015). Arghakhanchi district declared just before the start of 2015 (29.11.2014). This brings the number of ODF districts to ten out of 14 districts. Out of the remaining districts, Syangja is ready to be declared, and Rupandehi and Palpa are well on the track.Six districts have developed their Post-ODF Strategy, and also total sanitation movement is going ahead with full speed. The number of wards that have declared Total Sanitation has exceeded our expectations. 83 public, institutional and school latrines were completed.

The cumulative number of people benefiting from access to improved water supply in RWSSP-WN Phase II by year 2015 end was 118,189. Out of these, 45% benefited within this calendar year only. The total number of various types of schemes is now 339 in Phase II. This is 139 new schemes in 2015.

RWSSP-WN II targets the unserved people, and in 2015 we can conclude that we are well on track with this. Out of all beneficiary households (16,334 households), 70% were categorized as previously unserved by any external support. Another 14% were categorized as having had schemes that were more than 15 years old (design period over).  

While most water supply schemes continue to be gravity flow schemes (129), there is an increasing demand for lift schemes. At the end of 2015 we have for instance 32 solar lift schemes and another 24 electrical lift schemes.  In addition, 160 rainwater harvesting jars have been completed in Phase II.

The completed drinking water supply schemes have constructed 166,335 meters of distribution pipeline and another 140,972 meters of transmission line. Most of this digging has been done by the community members as in kind or local contribution, usually by hand.

These schemes had total 2,493 Water Users and Sanitation Committees (WUSCs) members out of which 51% were female. While there is fairly balanced representation of women across the different positions in WUSC, there are also differences: while only 10% of the chairpersons were women, only 25% of the treasurers were male. Out of the 118,189 beneficiaries, 31.5% were from various disadvantaged minority groups, 37.8 were Janajati and 30.7 from others.

This year we launched a number of new manuals and guidelines, including HRBA & GESI Strategy and Action Plan, a series of Water Safety Plan ++ and Post-Construction Guidelines. All these are available at this web-site.

See 2015 also in www.facebook.com/rwsspwn