More than 3 billion yuan investment not fully effective

BEIJING, March 24, 2006 to 2008, the state in 103 counties invested more than 3 billion yuan in rural drinking water security projects and not fully effective.　　The audit report released today disclosed that the audited projects were intended to address the problem of drinking water security for 7.8 million of people, but there are still 1.23 million people who are not being addressed.　　In addition, due to the management and institutional deficiencies, some of the completed rural Drinking Water safety project has a low rate of water quality, high operating costs, management and maintenance is not in place and the engineering utilization rate is not high, affecting the rural drinking water safety work effect.　　Xu Jiming, Director of the Audit Division of Foreign investment in the Audit office, said that in 2009 the audit carried out rural drinking water safety project as an important livelihood project. The audit bulletin released today specifically analyzes the impact of management and institutional deficiencies on engineering results. The auditors found that in some areas, rural drinking water safety projects did not install water purification facilities as required.　　131 of the Rural drinking water safety projects with high fluoride and brackish water as the source of water in the audit, 36 of the projects did not design water purification facilities, accounted for 27%, 19 of the projects did not install water purification facilities according to the design requirements, accounting for 15%. In addition, owing to inadequate funding, a considerable proportion of rural drinking water security projects did not carry out water quality monitoring, and in the audited projects, the health sector conducted only 22% of the projects in 2008.　　Water quality monitoring has never been carried out since the operation of many centralized drinking water safety projects. The audit notice also said that at present, the rural school drinking Water Safety project construction is insufficient. The audit investigation found that because of the lack of funds allocation focus support, rural school drinking Water Project construction lag, the problem of drinking water insecurity has not been fully resolved, individual places are relatively prominent.　　As at the end of 2008, in rural schools in 72 counties, the level of drinking water did not reach 35% per cent of national standards. Some policy lag also affects the project effect, the biggest question is, the rural drinking water project ownership belongs to.　　1181 of the rural drinking water projects in the audit have not implemented the ownership, which leads to the uncertainty of the project owner, the protection of rights and interests, and the prospect of the project operation. A potential threat is that, of the 103 counties audited, 66 have not developed a special contingency plan that takes rural drinking water security as an important component.　　There is a general situation in which security measures such as personnel security, technical support and material reserve have not been implemented, and the mechanism of rural drinking water safety prediction and early warning operation is not perfect, which is not conducive to the effective development of rural drinking water emergency. The audit notice also disclosed that some places to the supporting funds gap passed on to farmers, resulting in the rise in the proportion of the population self-financing.