The proposed budget for fiscal 2021-22 lacks proper allocation and focus for hygiene sub-sector which is a key priority to fight Covid-19 and keep progress towards the SDG Goals.
At a joint press conference organized by WaterAid, UNICEF, PPRC, FANSA-BD, FSM Network, Sanitation and Water for All, WASH Alliance, MHM Platform, stressing the need for reducing the gap in WASH allocation of resources in rural and urban area, experts said, such an entrenched gap needs to be reduced and an equitable allocation is also solicited to achieve the SDG 6.
The analysis presented at the press conference reflecting on the proposed budget FY21-22 allocation for WASH shows a slight decline in WASH budget allocation with 119.55 billion in FY21-22 from 122.27 billion-taka last year.
They said just like the previous years, the allocation for the sub-sector hygiene has been overlooked in the 2021-22 fiscal year regardless the predominance of pandemic. T
The proposed allocation remains skewed toward urban areas and that too mainly on the major cities with WASA, and substantially ignored the rural and hard to reach areas. The analysis reflect the gap of deliveries between urban and rural areas widening over the years, revealing that that in five years’ period there happens to be almost no change in shares of urban (80% – 83%) and rural (20% -17%) allocation.
Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman, chairman of the Power and Participatory Research Centre said, ‘Geographical inequality of WASH allocations remains significant, where cities and towns have received the highest percentage of the allocated funding compared to rural, char, hilly, and coastal areas in previous years.”
Hasin Jahan, Country Director of WaterAid said, “The government has proposed to repeal VAT on sanitary napkin, which is a praiseworthy. There needs to be a monitoring mechanism to materialize this change in price so that women and girls can be benefited.”
However, for the fiscal 2021-2022, the press conference jointly recommended addressing hygiene as a pandemic priority – both to combat Covid-19 and cover health-hygiene linkages – WASH allocations in Budget 2021-22 should open hygiene as a separate sub-sectoral line-item, to rethinking of WASH allocation priorities to address entrenched gaps in resource allocation between rural and urban.
They also recommended initiatives taken on water-related environmental and risk reduction projects are commendable to scale up in disaster-prone areas, particularly in coastal strip of the country and to reduce capacity gaps of implementing agencies.
