A lack of treatment facilities means more than 300 million farmers, 37.5 per cent of China's rural population, struggle to get safe drinking water, Gao Juncai, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's Department of Rural Economy, told the fifth World Water Congress in Beijing yesterday.

People fish under the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu Province September 10, 2006. [Reuters]

The central government's allocation is expected to help half of the affected people change their water supplies by the end of 2010, Gao said.

The need for action is illustrated by frequent epidemic alarms in recent years. Last year in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South China, at least 150 epidemics of typhoid, dysentery and diarrhoea were reported, with more than 80 per cent identified as a result of people drinking polluted water, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Behind the country's rapid economic growth and development, concerns over deteriorating environment rise.

"Industrial discharge of polluted water is estimated to have increased by 30 per cent this year over last year," said Xu Shufan of the State Administration of Environmental Protection.

Zhang Yue, an official from Ministry of Construction, said he was deeply worried about the problem of waste water processing.

"Currently, almost half of the waste water has not been effectively recycled despite a lot of economic input in the sector," he said.

In the coming five years, the nation will inject 330 billion yuan (US$ 41.2 billion) into waste water processing to ensure 70 per cent of waste water in urban areas gets recycled, Zhang said.

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