RAWALPINDI, Feb 6: The Asian Development Bank on Friday signed an agreement to provide Sindh $300 million for improving basic urban services like health, water supply and sanitation, drainage and solid waste management in 20 towns across the province.

The agreement was signed by Economic Affairs Division Secretary Farrukh Qayyum on behalf of the federal and Sindh governments and ADB’s Country Director, Mr Rune Stroem.

The initiative will enhance investment, innovate institutional arrangement and help improve health and quality of life in Sindh. The programme will enable 500,000 households to get water supply, waste water and solid waste management services.

It is expected to soften the impact from displacement by prioritising rehabilitation and optimising work within existing facilities. New construction is proposed on vacant government land where feasible.

To ensure compliance with government and ADB policies and requirements on involuntary resettlement, a Land Acquisition and Resettlement Framework has been prepared in accordance with the ADB’s policy on involuntary resettlement.

According to an ADB evaluation report, cities and towns in the centre and south of the province like Khairpur Mirs, Sukkur, Shikarpur, Larkana, Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas,Thatta and Badin “are under increasing stress of population growth and continuing urban poverty and the provision of urban infrastructure and services falls short of targets for quality, continuity and coverage”.

Some 55 per cent of urban population in Sindh living outside Karachi have access to piped water, but the water “is of poor quality and the supply is not continuous. Only 37 per cent of the population is served by garbage collection system. No sanitary landfills exist, and waste is disposed of by either burning or dumping into open spaces illegally or the drainage channels”.

“Poor coverage, inadequate institutional infrastructure for planning and management of urban services keeps quality low, cost high and impedes the economic competitiveness of these cities. It results in higher business and household costs, poor urban environment and the low potential investment. All this contributes to a downward spiral of development and push for migration to bigger cities which are already under pressure to cope with rising population”, the report said.

According to the report, the service delivery in Sindh “needs to be separated from system regulation and political interest; service provision needs to be progressively placed on a commercial and self-sustaining basis, leveraging private sector expertise and incentive structures as appropriate.”