Drinking Water Supply Of Cambodia In Rural Areas: A Case Study On Hygiene And Sanitation

Clean water and environmental sanitation are basic needs of people’s daily life andthey have become urgent requirements for protection and improvement of people’s healthand living conditions, as well as for the cause of national industrialization andmodernization. In Cambodia, the water supply in rural areas, compare to the total watersupply, is quite low and more than50%people in Cambodia have no access to clean orsafe drinking water. This study focuses on the drinking water supply in rural areas ofCambodia and investigates the existing policies and strategies related to improving ruralwater supply and sanitation. The main objective of this thesis is to find out the existingproblems and challenges of the supply of clean drinking water in rural areas and thefeasible solutions and then put forward suggestions concerning improving cleaning watersupply and sanitation for rural population and improving the health of the rural populationfor the Cambodian government.Since rural areas are poor and remote regions in Cambodia and the government hasnot paid enough attention to them, the specific official data of the water supply in ruralareas and data related to sanitation and hygiene in rural areas are rare, it is difficult tocollect published and reliable sources regarding specific provinces. To make this studycredible and accurate, the writer conducted a series of face-to-face interviews with manynative residents from the rural areas in several provinces and collected first-hand data foranalysis while the writer were in Cambodia from December23,2013to March10,2014.By analyzing the data collected, it is found that in general Cambodia still has plentifulwater resources. However, water resources are unevenly distributed both in place and time.The main problems are: the increasing use of surface water for rice field irrigation, seriousimpact of deforestation on water resources, ground water containing high amount of ironand manganese which requires expensive treatment, increasing pollution of surface andground water due to industrial and domestic wastes. Public piped water supply schemesfor a number of households are not yet popular. Households usually use individualhousehold water supply facilities such as dug wells, rainwater jars or rain water tanks. Over50%of rural households use dug wells,25%use untreated water from rivers,streams, springs, lakes or ponds and over10%use rainwater. Water quality generally doesnot meet hygienic standards. Sanitation in rural areas is also worrisome, and some diseasesare also closely related to drinking water resource. Based on previous researches and theon-the-spotinvestigation carried out by the writer, the following suggestions are put forward:first, the government should increase investment to expand the areas for cash crops and topromote the development of livestock breeding, forestry, fishery and handicraftproduction; second, the government should increase spending on health infrastructure;third, the government should promoting the application of new and modern equipment andtechnologies in rural production and processing; last but not least, the government needsto give support to households who join cooperatives in a new mechanism, being moreflexible in issuing certificates of land use and land tenure.