26 Millions lack drinking water |
http://www.sina.com.cn 2003/11/05 17:18 Shanghai Daily |
Almost 26 million rural people in China still lack clean drinking water despite massive investment to ease water shortage in the country's northern and western regions, officials said yesterday. "We have made breakthroughs in easing rural residents' access to drinking water," Vice Minister of Water Resources Zhai Haohui said at a national conference on drinking water for rural population, which opened in Shijiazhuang City, capital of northern Hebei Province, yesterday. "The rural water supply project will guarantee safe drinking water for rural residents after 2004 when we hope to resolve the water shortage in the countryside," Zhai said. Drinking water was somewhat difficult to get for approximately 50.2 million rural Chinese people, especially in Hebei and Shanxi provinces, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north and Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in the northwest, according to statistics for early 2000 from the Ministry of Water Resources. In 2000, China launched a massive project with a total investment of 17 billion yuan (US.1 billion) to build water resources projects, sink wells and desalinate alkali-salt water for millions of farmers. "We expect to reach the goal of providing enough clean drinking water for the 50.2 million farmers one year ahead of schedule in 2004," according to Zhao Leshi, an official of rural water resources with the ministry. "We solved the drinking water problem for 24.23 million people in the rural areas by the end of 2002 and 15.6 million more are expected to have access to clean drinking water by the end of this year," he added. |
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