WSP Bd -Urban W&S

General question: Results related to the intended outcome 2014Question: Summarise results related to the intended outcome (this information will be sent to Open Aid)Answer: On outcome level: - The Government of Bangladesh (and water utilities) have focused greater attention on pro-poor policy reforms and particularly the extension of services to the Hard to Reach Areas and people (including urban low income communities). - The Water Act 2013 was approved to safeguard the quantity and quality of drinking water supply. Now the rules & model by-laws need to be developed to harmonize this Act with the City Corporation, Pourashava and Union Parishad acts. - 33 urban local governments are collating information on the performance of their utilities and preparing yearly performance improvement plans within their own budget to address the performance challenges. - A total of 54 water utilities (33 urban & 21 rural) are delivering improved water services and more than 100 private manufacturers are delivering multiple sanitary options in response to demand for quality products. On output level: - 7,920 new consumers served by the 33 utilities demonstrating improved O&M performance through the WSP initiated and LGD facilitated water utility benchmarking process. - Currently, there is no separate policy for urban WSS. In FY13, the government has requested support to develop an urban WSS strategy and UNICEF have agreed to fund this strategy. In F13, WSP was requested to chair the task force responsible for the development of the urban WSS strategy. In FY14, WSP will continue to work with the Policy Support Unit on the development of the urban & rural WSS strategy. - All the participating 34 utilities prepared performance improvement plans with their own budget. The implementation of these PIPs is being collated. - With the support of the World Bank, D-WASA and C-WASA have allocated 10 million USD respectively for the extension of WSS services to Low Income Communities (LICs). D-WASA has more than doubled the number of registered connections in LICs from 121 (in FY09) to 324 (in FY13) serving a total of 9,720 households (an estimated 48,600 slum dwellers). In FY13, WSP supported assessments of the defacto status of service provision in LIC areas. WSP has proposed a range of models for facilitating the extension of water supply & sanitation services into LIC areas that leverage funds from the land & house owners (incl. defacto owners) to improve the quality of WSS services.