Vice President Joseph Nyumah Boakai launched the WASH Sector Investment Plan at the end of the three-day national WASH sector review.

The WASH Sector Review, which was held in the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex last week,  was attended by the country’s major development and multilateral partners, and took place only a few days after the UN High Level Panel meeting in Monrovia on the Post-2015 development agenda, which reiterated the importance of the WASH sector.

The WASH Sector Investment Plan is part of a concerted effort by government and stakeholders to improve the situation in the WASH sector in Liberia. The five-year plan outlines priorities for rebuilding the country’s WASH sector that had been ravaged by decades of civil conflict. Access to water and sanitation services in Liberia is still low and many facilities are no longer functioning as Liberia recovers from years of war that ended in 2003.

Four out of every ten people still lack access to water, and only a third of the population have access to sanitation services. An estimated 35 percent of existing clinics and schools do not have adequate water and sanitation facilities. Solid waste management services are only available in Monrovia City, covering an estimated 55 percent of the solid waste in the capital.

The WASH Sector Investment Plan was developed with support from the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), and outlines funding requirements of US$600 million to achieve the targets set for 2017.

Representatives of the World and African Development Banks, the US Government and UNICEF, among others, pledged support to the government’s initiative, and encouraged policy makers to work tirelessly at implementing the plan, leading to the end of WASH related deaths, while strengthening the country’s development.