East China's Jiangsu Province is working on a long-term project to extend all of its urban water supply systems to the rural areas, so that the local villagers can drink clean water as the urban inhabitants.

Vice Minister of Construction Qiu Baoxing said in Changshu, Jiangsu Provicne, Tuesday to extend urban water-supply pipelines to the rural areas can not only help the rural with clean and qualified water, but also help control over exploitation of ground water.

In addition, Qiu said, when the rural people have to pay for the water they used, they will build up the sense of saving water and the fees they pay for the water will also help speed up rural water supply system construction.

The eastern province started the urban-rural network of water supply project three years ago, firstly in three southern cities, namely Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou.

Since the year 2000, the three cities expanded the capacities of their water supply plants and extended their water pipes to towns and villages where have no capacity to produce qualified water for life and industry.

By the year 2003, the three cities have successfully transferred urban qualified water to over 211 towns and 2,379 villages, providing over 5.6 million rural people, or 69.8 percentof the region's total rural population, with running water.

While ministerial statistics show that currently only 19.63 percent Chinese villages can have access to qualified water, and less than half of the rural areas in China can get water supply.

Wang Xiang, Deputy Director of the Construction Department of Jiangsu Province, said to further improve rural water supply service, the province is launching the second regional project of urban-rural joint water supply, covering five other cities in the southern and eastern parts of the province. At the same time, project plan for the third regional project in the northern part is also under the way.

Qiu said such an urban-rural joint water-supply system has just started in China, which will be gradually promoted to other areas.

(Xinhua News Agency May 12, 2004)