In 2006, only about 46% of Viet Nam’s rural population had access to clean water, and water was not available throughout the year. About 83% had latrines, but only 48% of these were hygienic, by government standards. Knowledge of individual sanitation remained poor. Only 2.3% knew that handwashing with soap may prevent some communicable diseases, and only 13% of households and 11% of students washed their hands with soap before meals and after urination or defecation.
To help address the situation, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $45 million sector loan for the Central Region Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Project in December 2009. The project’s intended impact was better health and living conditions in the rural areas of six provinces in Viet Nam’s central coastal region: Binh Dinh, Ha Tinh, Nghe An, Quang Binh, Quang Nam, and Thanh Hoa. This was to be achieved through better hygiene awareness and access to clean water and hygienic sanitation of selected communities. Key planned outputs included sustainable piped water supply systems, improved household and public sanitation, improved hygiene awareness, and strengthened sector planning and implementation capacity. With gender equity as a theme, a comprehensive gender action plan was included in the project design, providing actions to enhance women’s agency and benefits. 100% of the gender targets were met.
Against an original target of 24 piped water supply systems supplying water to about 65,000 households or 350,000 people, the project constructed 14 piped water supply systems in 33 communes and connected a total of 48,424 households, comprising 206,024 people, to the systems. The final output exceeded the revised target of 200,000 people or 45,000 households, prompted by a significant cost overrun due to foreign exchange fluctuation, price inflation, and weaknesses in appraisal cost estimates. 6,813 of the connected households were poor or near-poor, women-headed, and had females as sole income-earners. Water quality and systems’ operation targets were met, and average water tariffs were well below the average monthly income affordability threshold set by the project. Annual average revenues exceeded operation and maintenance (O&M) costs; however, some subproject tariffs were insufficient to cover depreciation costs. A lower-than-anticipated daily water use per capita was achieved because of the availability of alternative, but unhygienic, water sources. Continued information, education, and communication campaigns are expected to increase the consumption of clean piped water, as seen in batch 1 subprojects.
52,368 household latrines, 36 school latrines, and 16 public latrine units with separate facilities for women and men were constructed/upgraded. Upgrading of 4,790 of the household latrines was supported by grants from the Sanitation Revolving Fund (SRF), established in 5 project provinces to provide loans to nonpoor households. Beneficiaries of the SRF grants for the household latrines were poor and near-poor households, of which 1,271 had females as sole income provider.
Water supply and sanitation commune committees (WSCCs) were formed and together with project-designated health and sanitation promoters (HSPs) were trained and mobilized to raise hygiene awareness and promote community participation in the project. Women’s participation in both the WSCCs and HSPs exceeded targets. Trainings in planning and budgeting, O&M, safeguards, and many more, strengthened the institutional capacity of key sector agencies. Capacity development activities were also undertaken for provincial and commune-level Viet Nam women’s unions that managed the SRFs and played a critical in (i) ensuring gender equity in water and sanitation access, (ii) driving ownership within communities, and (iii) ensuring continued operation of the water supply and sanitation systems beyond project closing.
Delivery of the key outputs led to attainment of the intended project outcome. By 2017, 83.8% of the population in the subproject service areas had been connected to piped water supply systems while, as of 2018, 91.4% had access to hygienic latrines. The occurrence of water-borne diseases in the entire population consequently fell to 8% from 15%, while that among women dropped to 8.5% from 18.9%.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, through the National Center for Rural and Clean Water and Environmental Sanitation, was the executing agency. Provincial project management units, created under the provincial Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development, implemented the project.
