Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa – Phase III Project of Ethiopian Water Technology Center was launched here on Tuesday.

Speaking at the launching ceremony, State Minister of Water Resources, Adugna Jebessa said though Ethiopia is blessed with huge water resource potential, the country couldn’t benefit from these rich resources.

The ministry has ratified the Universal Access program in 2005 with a view to tackling the challenges in a systematic way thereby addressing safe water service to 98 percent of rural and 100 percent of urban population by 2012.

He said the Ethiopian government believes that without building capacity it is difficult to implement any program in a sustainable manner.

Accordingly, he said the Groundwater Development and Water Supply Training Centre (EWTEC) aiming at developing the human resource capacity of the regional water bureaus and the affiliated agencies of the ministry was established in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The centre has been providing comprehensive training in the fields of groundwater management, drilling technology, water supply engineering, and groundwater modeling in the forms of basic and advanced courses over the past ten years.

The state minister expressed his beliefs that the third phase of the project will play key role in the continued effort of human resource capacity building the sector.

Speaking on his part, Country Representative of JICA Sasaki Katsuhiro said the third phase of the project is aiming at improving the capacity of EWTEC as core training centre for water supply technician and engineers of Ethiopia based upon the latest training needs survey.

He said expressed JICA’s commitment to continue supporting the ongoing efforts of the Ethiopian government to improve the access to safe water through the human capacity development.

- ENA