Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa – Minister of Water Resources, Asfaw Dingamo said very encouraging progress has been made in the water and sanitation sector over the recent years.

The greatly strengthened political commitment, an increasing awareness of the importance of harmonization and alignment consensus on the need to improve inter-sector coordination for water, sanitation and hygiene interventions, among others, have contributed for the success, he said.

The minister was speaking at the opening of the 34th Water Engineering Development Centre (WEDC) International Conference on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene here on Monday.

The Ministries of Water Resources, Health and Education signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the integrated implementation of water supply, sanitation and hygiene in 2006. He said since then the ministries have been working hard to establish the coordination structures needed to turn the MoU into practice.

Asfaw said the intellectual guidance to be gained from the experts taking part in the conference will be most timely for the country in its ongoing assessments of how to continue to accelerate the progress in the sector.

The conference would discuss on over 100 different topics including water development, water supply, environment sanitation and organization management.

For more than 30 years, the WEDC conference has been brining together eminent practitioners and researchers from all over the world to share their expertise in the sector.

More than 500 policy makers, researchers and professionals are in attendance at the five-day conference.

- ENA