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A social business for drinking water in Bangladesh
Presenter: Erice Lesueur, Project Director, Veolia Water

The health of 35 to 80 million people is endangered due to water contaminated by natural high arsenical level in tube-wells water in Bangladesh.Over 100,000 cases of skin lesions and cancers caused by arsenic have occurred, in the last decade and many more are expected. Due to the slow effect of arsenic poisoning, lack of information and absence of alternative solutions, rural people still consume contaminated water. Facing this situation, Grameen Healthcare and Veolia Water created, one year ago, a joint venture company within the “social business” model of Pr.Yunus (“no loss, no dividend”, sales revenues to cover the global operation and investment costs,profits reinvested in the JV for social purposes), in order to deliver safe water to the rural poor people. It’s first operation has already been implemented in Goalmari (Dhaka area). Using surface waters from the river, a new plant has already started. An innovative delivery system associating stand pipes, tap points managed by “Grameen ladies “,and bicycle distribution, has been designed to provide drinking water at WHO standards. This self-sustaining and innovative solution leads to provide drinking water (WHO standards) at an extremely affordable price (0,25 cts/l, almost 10 times less than bottle water ). A local team has been hired and especially trained to run Goalmari and develop new projects in Bangladesh..Through a partnership between International-Center-for-Diarrhoeal-Disease-Research-of-Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) and Veolia’s R&D, main social and sanitary indicators wil be quantified through a pre-post survey.

Contact: eric.lesueur@veolia.com

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