Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) has been working in the State of Uttar Pradesh for improvement of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) to address the challenges faced by the poor and marginalized communities. Aga Khan Foundation intends to have a Guidebook on Water Safety Planning (special emphasis on Uttar Pradesh) for the need and improvement of maintenance of the rural water supply system for ensuring sustained delivery of services with the prescribed standard quality as per ISO 10500 2012. In this connection, AKF with the technical and financial support from the World Health Organization (WHO) SEARO has undertaken the task of preparing Water Safety Plan (WSP) Guidebook to assist the stakeholders in the State of Uttar Pradesh engaged in implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) to be aware of and understand the process involved in maintaining proper quality of drinking water.

To prepare the WSP Guidebook AKF has partnered with SIGMA Foundation and finalized the Guidebook within a month. Therefore, Water Safety Plan (WSP) is considered an internationally best practice for assessing and managing public health risks of drinking-water supply and sanitation system. These concerns assume greater significance when dealing with widespread contagion like the one emerging from novel corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic. The main aim of this Guidebook was to provide guidance to the Gram Panchayat and the VWSCs, as well as, others involved in implementation of the JJM to integrate drinking water quality and supply of safe water from the planning to the operation & maintenance (O&M) stage. Further, many of the providers of drinking water at the village level and those who supervise their functions need to be aware of the issues of water safety and understand the prescribed processes to maintain the water quality to ensure water supplied is safe for human consumption. It was found that the water quality situation was worse in the projected districts and the water born diseases are also high. There are also lack of practice of improved sanitary system and open defecation is also common. In context of water quality monitoring the number of water samples are few and the establishment of NABL accredited are almost nil.

Therefore, for successful implementation of WSP a step-by-step approach was developed by WHO and elaborated through a Five-Fold Mechanism for community benefit including (i) preparation, (ii) assessment, (iii) monitoring, (iv) management & communication, and (v) review and the current Guidebook followed the same. The degree of influence of the various components of the WSP indicates the technical adequacy, involvement of GP, monitoring of the quality system, verification procedure, basic hygiene practices and awareness generation towards sustained water supply system; and needs to be genuinely assessed by the WSP team and stakeholders. Finally, this guidebook helped for implementing the water safety plan not only in Uttar Pradesh but also across the country.