Provincial Waterworks Authority

The Provincial Waterworks Authority was established on 28 February 1979, as a state enterprise under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry. Prior to the creation of the PWA, water supply services in the provincial areas had been assigned to two government agencies—the Department of Public Works (DOPW) was in charge of the water supply services in municipal areas outside the Bangkok metropolitan area, while the Department of Health (DOH) took care of rural areas. When the performance of these two agencies was found wanting, the government shifted water supply affairs, along with officials and employees, transferred from DOPW's provincial waterworks division and DOH's rural waterworks division, to the newly created Provincial Waterworks Authority. The governor of the PWA is Mr Seree Supratid.

As of end-May 2014, the PWA had 7,730 employees, 987 of them working at Bangkok headquarters, and the remaining 6,743 staffers working at 10 PWA regional offices and 233 waterworks across the country. Of Thailand's 20.7 million households, PWA provides water services to 3.6 million of them (24.5 percent of the country's total households) or 16 million persons. A sister-agency, the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA), provides water services to 2.1 million households (12.5 percent) or 8.4 million persons in Bangkok and two neighboring provinces. Local governments provide water services to 11.5 million households (52.48 percent) or 38.7 million persons in regional areas. Over 3.5 million households (12.41 percent) or 8.25 million persons, mostly in remote rural areas, have no access to piped-water.