Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa – The Addis Ababa City Administration has announced priority attention to bring to success efforts launched to meet the water supply needs of residents.

This came during a visit on Monday of a team of senior government officials led by Mayor Kuma Demeksa to field trial deep water well drilling being implemented by the city’s water and sewerage authority. The team appreciates the results so far gained.

Mayor Kuma on the occasion said the water sector comes second after housing development project in the city government’s list of priority areas of development.

A range of related activities are being carried out to meet the city administration target of 80 per cent water supply coverage in the city by the end of the current Ethiopian budget year, Kuma said, adding currently three foreign and local contractors are drilling 11 deep water wells.

He said the success that came in from the wells drilled within the Akaki Ground Water parameter sheds light on the likelihood that the annual target would be met.

The purpose of the visit was to assess the status of implementation of 40 deep water well drilling projects believed to dramatically enhance the city’s water supply coverage, according to Hailemariam Desalegn, government whip at parliament with a ministerial portfolio and chairman of the management board of the city’s water and sewerage authority.

In addition, he said, the visit had the double mission of assessing and identifying the kind of support needed to ongoing works aimed at integrating into the distribution system the medium well sites sunk over the past few years, he said.

It was confirmed that 27 of these medium wells have been channeled into the main distribution system, from which an additional 25, 268 cubic meters of water was harnessed.

This, hailemariam, who is a hydrology engineer and former instructor of the Debub University, said has enable the alleviation of water shortage at numerous localities, while putting the current supply coverage to 61 per cent from the previous 53 per cent.

Work on the drilling of the remaining 25 medium wells was being expedited, he said.

Meanwhile, most of work on a project launched to increase the water being harnessed at the Gefersa dam by 7,000 cubic meters has been completed, Hailemariam told ENA.

- ENA