Bangladesh has an enormous excess of surface water during the summer monsoon (June to October) and relative scarcity towards the end of the dry season in April and May.

[23] Despite the growth of public and private tubewells, achieving drinking water security remains a challenge due to naturally occurring arsenic and salts in groundwater.

These plants have a production capacity of about 20–60 cubic metres per day and mainly purify brackish shallow groundwater by passing it through a semi-permeable membrane.

[29]: 11 In June 2019, the Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE), the national lead agency for provision rural water supply, reported a total of 1.8 million waterpoints, of which 91% were functional.

The aid agencies later hired foreign experts who recommended treatment plants that were inappropriate to the conditions, were regularly breaking down, or were not removing the arsenic.

[11] Mitigation solutions are mainly technological: involving switching to arsenic-free groundwater (i.e. from deeper aquifers), treated surface water (for example with sand filters), rainwater harvesting, and arsenic filtration.

[24] Salinity in groundwater has been a widespread problem in the coastal aquifers and is caused by both natural and human-induced reasons, such as sea level rise due to climate change, storm surges and freshwater pumping.

[24] These systems often encounter disinfection failures, intermittent supplies and low pressure, due to poor operation and maintenance caused by financial and socio-political issues.

Drinking infected water resulted in infants and children suffering from acute gastrointestinal disease that led to a high child mortality rate.

Later, the national government approved the FAP's final report, called the Bangladesh Water and Flood Management Strategy (BWFMS), in 1995 with the support of donor agencies.

[63] According to a 2009 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to water and sanitation after a visit to Bangladesh, there is "an overall lack of monitoring and accountability" and "corruption continues to plague the sector".

Within the Division, the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) assists municipalities and communities in building water supply infrastructure in all parts of the country, except for the three largest urban areas, Dhaka, Khulna and Chittagong.

In 1999, on the recommendation of the World Bank[60] and after extensive consultation with all relevant actors, including NGOs and the civil society, the National Water Policy (NWP) was adopted.

The document explicitly states 6 main objectives:[69] Furthermore, WARPO has developed a National Water Management Plan (NWMP), which was approved by NWRC in 2004 and aims at implementing the NWP within 25 years.

They are empowered to charge tariffs and receive assistance from the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE),[78] which is responsible for waterworks development projects as well as planning in the rural water sector and all urban areas except for the three largest cities.

[83] Furthermore, "since 2005, the Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP) provides a pooled fund to install or upgrade drinking water facilities in schools.

Installation is led by the Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE), with the choice of the water supply technology dependent on the availability and quality of groundwater.

[2] According to an evaluation by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 30% of the rural water supply and sanitation in Bangladesh is financed by the national government, whereas 34% comes from bilateral and multilateral donors and another 4% from international and local NGOS.

[18] Scientists analysed the weekly water expenditure of households living on embanked land in coastal Bangladesh (in Polder 29 which is located in Khulna district in the southwest).

The first provided water to hitherto unserved slum areas through community-based organisations with the assistance of the NGO Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK) and WaterAid from the UK.

Without mentioning community-led total sanitation by name, the strategy incorporates important elements of this approach, such as an emphasis on participation by the whole community and the principle of not subsidising hardware except for the "hardcore poor".

[citation needed] These efforts to combine piped drinking water and irrigation schemes were initiated in 1999 by the Rural Development Academy (RDA) with government funds and no donor involvement.

RDA invited sponsors and offered to finance the construction of the well and the water supply system under the condition that: As of January 2008, 73 small schemes had been completed, both in areas where the shallow aquifer is contaminated by arsenic and those where this is not the case.

[citation needed] Another approach has been supported by the World Bank through the Bangladesh Water Supply Program Project (BWSPP), implemented by the Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE).

This approach, initiated in 2001, has been inspired by the RDA experience, but with two crucial modifications: First, it required sponsors to come up with the entire financing up-front, which was supposed to be recovered through revenues from the sale of water.

[25] The SafePani model began in 2021 as a pilot project in eight unions of Khulna district, It included 171 schools and 33 healthcare facilities, with a total of 294 drinking water points.

[33]: 4 For example, it has been suggested that "professional service delivery models to manage and monitor clusters of schools with a results-based contract will promote more efficient and effective use of resources".

The main objectives of the framework are to co-operate to extend the coverage of water, sanitation, wastewater, and drainage services in Dhaka and Chittagong, especially to the poor, and to address long-standing reforms.

Furthermore, adequate regulations, monitoring, capacity building, and training, as well as the development of a local credit market and risk mitigation mechanisms for village piped water supply are supported under the project.

It supported the drilling of 9,772 deep tubewells, 300 rainwater harvesting systems and 393 dug wells in more than 1,800 villages, all of which operated and maintained by communities and benefiting between 2 and 2.5 million people.