The Hindu Business Line : Japanese loan for Bangalore's water, sewerage facilities

KARNATAKA, which is one of the States to benefit from a soft loan from the Japanese Government, hopes to use the assistance for providing a stable drinking water supply and sewerage facilities in Bangalore.

The State will be getting more than half of the Rs 5,600-crore assistance for eight developmental projects across various States. It will be allocated Rs 1,750 crore for the Bangalore water and sewerage facilities augmentation programme and Rs 634 crore for the Karnataka Sustainable Forest Management Bio-diversity Conservation programme. The funds will be disbursed by the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), the official organisation in charge of Japan's overseas economic cooperation operations.

With rapid growth in the last five years, the IT capital of India has been under tremendous pressure to meet the growing demand for drinking water supply and better sewerage facilities.

The current Phase 2 project (under a four-phase development scheme) covers the supply of Cauvery water to the city. It will boost the water supply capacity to 5,00,000 cubic meters per day. The Phase 1 project, the Bangalore City Water and Sewerage Development Project, was supported by a yen loan (the loan contract was signed in January 1996 for 28.452 billion yen). Apart from boosting water supply, the project will involve comprehensive reforms of water supply operations. Project goals include personnel training and development; repair of water supply networks to reduce water leakage rates that currently exceed 30 per cent; expansion of automated utility payment machine networks; consignment of operations to the private sector, and education efforts for water conservation.

The Government plans to cover 1.9 lakh hectares for forestation with the Japanese assistance. The project is to be implemented by the Forest Department with the active participation of local communities. It entails livelihood improvement initiatives such as occupational training and micro-finance as per the needs of the inhabitants of each village.

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