THE government has commended the World Bank for its support in enhancing access to clean water and sanitation in schools and rural communities through the Sustainable Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Programme (WASH).

Engineer Mwajuma Waziri, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Water, expressed gratitude to the World Bank for its support by highlighting the successful outcomes of the program at a special result and learning multi-country roundtable in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday.

She noted that the USD 352 million funded program has played a crucial role in boosting investments in the water sector, resource mobilization, and capacity building. The program, implemented in 25 regions (excluding Dar es Salaam) since 2019, is expected to achieve further milestones next year.

According to the PS, there has been an increment in the number of rural functional water supply points that has reached 72.3 percent. This has contributed to impacting the access to clean and safe water in rural areas to 85 percent.

She asserted that the programme compliments the National Development Vision 2025 and is in line with the implementation of the Five-Year Development Plan 2021/22 to 2025/26 with a great focus on increasing access to water, hygiene and sanitation.

The plan is set to ensure that by 2026 about 95 percent of the urban population will have access to improved water sources.

“To achieve these targets in line with sanitation the government had in July 2022 launched the third phase of the Water Sector Development Programme (WSDP) which targets at strengthening institutions for integrated water resource management, increasing water supply, sanitation and hygiene service,” said Waziri.

The programme is about to meet its target of increasing water supply to over eight million people.

On his part, Engineer Mashaka Sitta, Project Coordinator in the Ministry of Water commended the World Bank’s programme for having been instrumental in improving WASH in schools.

“The programme has been of positive benefits for pupils especially teenage girls and the host communities of the over 1,300 schools that have been covered so far out of the targeted over 1,800 schools,” said Sitta.

According to him, it has also been fundamental at creating systems change for how the government is addressing and managing WASH service delivery in rural areas.