A/HRC/42/47/Add.1 recommends that the Government review this practice and adopt a different procedure for those unable to pay water and sanitation tariffs for reasons beyond their control. 3. Institutions and rural areas 64. Another prominent concern related to affordability is the tariffs imposed on institutions, such as schools and health-care facilities. Schools and health centres provide basic services and the charges that apply to them cannot be seen as equivalent to those applied to commercial businesses and industries. One solution would be to establish a special tariff for schools and health centres and ensure that disconnections owing to lack of payment for those institutions do not occur. 65. An additional concern related to affordability arises when the Government is not compliant with its obligation of providing services, which include both construction and maintenance. This is very important for sanitation, in particular in rural areas, where households rely on their own resources to build or maintain latrines. Although the Special Rapporteur was happy to observe large quantities of ventilated improved pit latrines at every site that he visited, he also noticed that it was not always the Government that had provided them and that numerous households were obliged to build their own latrines. Building latrines can be very expensive for some families, which can result in the practice of open defecation. D. Quality and safety 66. The water used by households and individuals for domestic and personal use must be of sufficient quality to protect their health. 20 In the case of Lesotho, where water supply relies heavily on gravity-fed water, untreated or only disinfected, pollution of water by any means, including by agriculture, industry and wastewater must therefore be prevented. 67. In relation to water quality, it is vital that Lesotho establishes a national regulation on drinking water quality, concluding the efforts undertaken for the development of the draft quality standards and guidelines in 2013. Such efforts to establish a regulation should be coherent with the current and future realities of water supply in the country and consider the most updated scientific evidence, in particular the most recent version of the WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, which define the relevant limits for a wide range of potentially harmful substances to prevent “significant risk to health over a lifetime of consumption”. The regulation should also take into account collective and individual water supplies, the role of the government agents involved in the control and surveillance of drinking water quality, safety plans and the provision of information to users in a manner that is clear to them. 68. It is also clear that there is room for improvement in both control and surveillance of drinking-water quality. The routine quality control undertaken by the Water and Sewerage Company and the Department of Rural Water Supply covers a limited number of parameters. The surveillance undertaken by the Ministry of Health lacks the resources and staff to collect a larger number of and more representative samples or test more parameters. In that connection, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government endeavour to establish a well-equipped, well-staffed and accredited national laboratory for drinkingwater analysis, which can be at the disposal of all government agents involved in the monitoring and surveillance of water quality. 69. Water supply to the population living in rural areas, where it exists, does not include water treatment, nor do residents treat water at the household level. Considering the increasing degradation of water sources and the impact on water availability related to climate change, the Special Rapporteur emphasizes that water treatment in the rural areas, at the community or household level, should be part of the national agenda. 20 14 See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 15, para. 12.