Clean drinking water promised for Cabo Delgado

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Clean drinking water promised for Cabo Delgado

8:54 CAT | 17 Jun 2020

in file CoM

More than 70 per cent of the 2.8 million inhabitants of the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado will have access to clean drinking water by the year 2024, according to a promise made on Monday by the Minister of Public Works, Joao Machatine, cited by the independent television station STV.

To this end, the government will spend more than three billion meticais (about 43.2 million US dollars, at current exchange rates) to drill boreholes and build water supply systems, particularly in the rural areas, where there are serious shortages of clean water.

Machatine was speaking in Cabo Delgado where he inaugurated new water systems in Balama and Namuno districts which will benefit about 8,000 people.

Under the government’s present plans, he said, it will invest in the rural water sector “so that coverage rises from 40 to 43 per cent of the population by the end of this year. That, is we will increase the number of people benefitting from clean water from the current figure of more than 700,000 to about 800,000”.

But that is just for 2020. “If there are no constraints, then by the end of the current government’s term of office (2020-2024) about 70 per cent of the population will have access to water”, the Minister pledged.

The Balama water supply system will benefit about 5,000 inhabitants of the district capital, Balama town, but it is designed to expand to meet the needs of 28,000 people.

A second system, in the Machoca administrative post, in Namuno district, can eventually supply 9,000 people, but in the initial phase, water from this system will reach 3,000, said Machatine.

Taken together, the two systems cost over 100 million meticais, financed by the Mozambican government and by the Islamic Development Bank.

Currently, only about 40 per cent of the population of Cabo Delgado have access to clean drinking water. Most of the people living in the province rely on unsafe sources such as rivers, and traditional wells.

Source: AIM