US$8m Water Project for Gambia
20 March 2012
allAfrica.com - March 19, 2012
The government of The Gambia and The African Development Fund (ADF), on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012, signed a US$8 million grant for the construction and rehabilitation of drinking water supply and sanitation facilities in rural areas of The Gambia. The project will improve access to clean drinking water and safe sanitation for an estimated 65,000 people.
According to a press release from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, the Gambia Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project is an initiative of the Gambia government intended to develop capacity to provide safe drinking water and to address the unhygienic handling of drinking water as well as poor personal hygiene and sanitation practices in rural areas.This is expected to reduce water and sanitation related-deaths, which account for 20 percent of mortality of children under five, especially in rural areas.
At the signing ceremony, according to the release, Mambury Njie, the minister of Finance and Economic Affairs stated that, "clean water supply and sanitation is crucial in the realisation of any country's development goals and poverty reduction strategies, of which The Gambia is no exception.
Clean drinking water supply help in reducing health care cost as a result of the minimisation of water-borne diseases. This in turn will help in reducingthe stress on the country's national budget, thus redirecting some of the health care budgetary allocations into other development agendas. It's against this backdrop that the government of The Gambia has made it a priority to provide clean water supply and sanitation for its people especially in the rural areas".
Category: Water