NEW DELHI: The Urban Development Ministry is planning to involve private agencies to provide technical support to municipal bodies on issues of maintaining water supply, treating sewage and drainage systems.

Officials said that with increasing pace of urbanisation, water supply and sanitation aspects were getting greater priority but much needed to be done in these areas.

One important reason why these services were suffering is the lack of capacity that urban local bodies have in creating proper infrastructure that deals with water supply, sewage and drainage systems.

It is to help urban local bodies in these aspects that the ministry has decided to empanel firms with requisite expertise in these areas, officials said.

They said that water supply in most cities was intermittent and as per 2011 Census, only 32.7 per cent people in urban areas had sewer connections, 38.2 per cent septic tanks and while 12.6 per cent still defecate in open.

In most of the towns there is no planned storm drainage system.

They said keeping in mind the challenges of urbanisation, the ministry had decided to empanel agencies to create a pool of capacity that can provide technical support to states and urban local bodies to implement various projects, conduct studies and also impart training in the field of water supply and sanitation.

They said an expression of interest had been sought from eligible firms. Earlier the ministry has already empanelled consultancy firms for solid waste management to help states and urban local bodies.