The Rotary Pacific Water for Life Foundation is eager to partner with Government to deliver clean water and proper sanitation to rural communities across the country.
Foundation executive officer Neil Maharaj said this as he thanked Government for increasing its provision to the Water Authority of Fiji and urged more focus on providing proper sanitation facilities in rural areas.
Mr Maharaj said poor sanitation was attributed to the spread of typhoid, leptospirosis, and dengue in the Namosi and Ra provinces.
He said the foundation had invested over $1 million for 18 projects and 60 sanitation units this year.
“We were thinking of partnering with government departments if you’re building more at the grassroot levels,” he said.
In response, Minister of Finance Professor Biman Prasad said they had allocated funding for this purpose in “village development” and were looking at technology suitable for small settlements.
“We are hoping that that will be the beginning of addressing some of those sanitation issues and typhoid is a serious problem with the remote communities and villages,” he said.
“We are also talking to a lot of our development partners. In fact, there is heightened sense of optimism, confidence, engagement with the Government from our international partners, donors, and we’ve already had some early wins.”
This, he said, included the announcement of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently about setting up a 100- bed super-specialty hospital which would be done through a grant.
Prof Prasad said there were a number of other discussions taking place within the framework of climate financing as multilateral agencies and development partners were talking about climate resilient infrastructure, which includes public health sanitation.
“So, the Government’s focus in the next two or three budgets in partnership with our development partners and multilateral agencies, is to address some of those fundamental and we’re not sort of looking at some big novelty type projects.
“I mean, there are things that can be done with small amounts of funds, and yet, the impact of that could be quite significant in terms of improving public health and things like sanitation. So that’s on the agenda.”
