 Concerning water supply, according to a survey undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1995, 370,000 permanent inhabitants in rural areas (0.5% of the total population) did not have access to piped water supply.They are supplied by 30,000 water points, most of them wells.The government plans to increase the access rate to 100%, improve water quality by establishing protection areas around wells and springs, and to increase the reliability of water supply by increasing production, storage and interconnection of existing networks.