Safe drinking water for all: US envoy

 

Mr Verma visited the WaterHealth Centre at Lingarajpuram and revealed some of the future plans of the organisation. He said, “So far the US Government has supported the establishment of nine active clean water centres, each serving at least 350 households per day. We are poised to support the Municipal Corporation and its partner, WaterHealth India, to scale up these water centres to 25 by May 2016, with a goal of eventually serving all of the wards in Bengaluru.” 

 

Thanks to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiative, WaterHealth has provided access to clean drinking water for more than 8,000 households in Lingarajpuram and surrounding areas. Citizens are now able to purchase 20 litres of clean water for Rs 5. 

 

He added, “Building on this partnership with USAID and BBMP, WaterHealth ultimately plans to scale up its footprint and provide safe water to over 100 million people in India by 2020. In the future, we plan to partner with various other urban local bodies in Karnataka and other states.” 

 

Later, on the sidelines of the event, Mr Verma maintained that there was a lot of focus on improving the two-way trade between the two countries. Stressing that the two-way trade was pegged around $100 billion, Mr Verma highlighted that the countries were working towards increasing this to $500 billion. When asked his experience as an ambassador, he chuckled, “It’s been great so far!” 

 

He emphasized that the relations between US and India has got a boost due to the continuous efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama. “There is more government-to-government co-operation with India than any other country. We work together in over 80 different initiatives,” he said.