HUNDREDS of millions of people that the UN declares have gained access to safe water and sanitation are still struggling with polluted supplies and raw sewage, a leading expert has said.

In its latest report on the progress of the UN Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of people lacking access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that since 1990 1.3 billion people had gained access to improved drinking water and 500 million better sanitation. The world was on course to “meet or exceed” the water target, it said, but was likely to miss the sanitation goal by nearly one billion people.

However, Prof Asit Biswas, who has advised national governments, six UN agencies and Nato, said in an interview that official figures showing that many cities and countries had met their targets were “baloney”, and predicted that by the UN deadline of 2015 more people in the world would suffer from these problems than when the goals were first adopted.

Biswas, president of the Third World Centre for Water Management, spoke to this reporter ahead of a speech in which he was to tell water industry leaders that inadequate improvements to drinking water and sewage are hiding the true scale of the problem and storing up environmental problems for future generations.

— The Guardian, London