Minister for rural development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has stressed upon the supply of good quality of water and given highest priority to sanitation programmes in the Interntional Sanitation Year. Addressing a press conference about the out come of the recent two-day meeting of the state secretaries in charge of rural drinking water supply and sanitation in the country, he said sustainability of water sources and convergence among various programmes to achieve drinking water security was of the utmost importance. He called upon the states to achieve drinking water security by taking over full responsibility of management and maintenance of water supply schemes and drinking water sources in the villages by instituting a suitable award like Sajal Gram Puraskarand. Prasad said under Bharat Nirman, all water quality affected habitations were to be addressed by March 2009. A High Powered Technical Expert Group to examine various emerging issues in drinking water as well as sanitation sector and suggest measures to tackle the new challenges under the chairmanship of former chief of UNICEF Water and Sanitation Gourishankar Ghosh has also been set up. He said 2008 was the International Year of Sanitation as declared by the United Nations and India was a host of SACOSAN, which was to be held in November 2008. He also stressed on the need to achieve full sanitation coverage and said the state was advised to devise statutory and administrative norms in this regard.