Two water treatment plants launched in Nyaruguru ahead of Friday’s World Water Day
Two water treatment plants were, on Tuesday, officially launched in Nyabimata and Mata sectors of Nyaruguru district, Southern Rwanda.
The Nyaruguru-based water treatment plants have the capacity to daily process 2,400 cubic meters for an estimated 100,000 residents in three of the Southern Province’s eight districts, namely Nyaruguru, Gisagara and Huye, officials said.
The three districts are supplied in water through a 296 kilometer-long pipeline. And there is an interval of between 500 and 1,000 meters between one water tap and another for households in a dispersed housing setting, and within a 200 meters range for households in a grouped habitat style, this news website has learnt.
Officiating at the function, Rwanda’s Minister of State for water and energy, Emma-Francoise Isumbingabo, said Rwanda targets to have supplied clean, safe drinking water to the entire Rwandan population come the year 2017 − stretching from the current statistics of about 80 per cent of the country’s estimated 10.5 million population (accessing clean, safe drinking water).
The Nyabimata-Mata water treatment plants, which a Water and Sanitation Project in the Southern Province (a project best known for its French acronym, PEPAPS) has built with a financial assistance from the European Union, is reported to have cost over one billion Rwandan francs (just over $1,587,300).
The two water treatment plants are expected to boost Nyaruguru district’s statistics with regard to clean, safe drinking water, which the district’s Mayor, François Habitegeko, had, in 2012, estimated at 78 per cent for a district population of over 270,000 people.
Worldwide, over 800 million people are reported to be short of clean, safe drinking water. An even gloomier scenario when it comes to Sub-Saharan Africa: for every five people, two of them lack clean, safe drinking water, statistics accessed online suggest.
