By Amadou Jadama
The newly appointed Managing Director of the National Water and Electricity Company yesterday inspected a multi- million-dollar India-funded water project sites in the Greater Banjul Area.
The tour was meant to check on the progress of work and took them to Mamuda borehole site, Jamburr and Sukuta water treatment plants.
The Indian project is a 4-year project launched in 2017 costing 22.5 million dollars to support the expansion of water supply in the Greater Banjul Area and other parts of the country.
The work is almost complete and once done, it will massively increase the capacity water supply in the Greater Banjul Area.
Speaking to journalists at the project site , Nani Juwara said: “We realised that almost ten boreholes have been dug and they are all completed now and they are just waiting for the transmission lines to be connected so that the pumping can start in earnest. We still have a number of boreholes that are still out there almost about nine additional and that would be available hopefully in the coming two months, and they will be ready for full operations”.
He said when these boreholes are ready, “we are very optimistic that the production capacity will be increased significantly and that would help to reduce the complaints currently coming from our customers. We have number of areas that are seriously affected right now, this includes Kololi, Kanifing and Pipeline areas.
But we are doing everything to ensure this project is completed as soon as possible to mitigate the current problems faced by our customers,” he said.
He revealed that they expected water would have been available at the Sukuta treatment plant from the boreholes since July but the situation as is not normal amid Covid. “But generally, we are happy with the progress so far even though we are aware that more needs to be done so that we can meet the demands of our customers.
We have funding from OIC of 22.5 million dollars, similar to this one, which will provide us an additional 10 boreholes and a treatment plant as well as a distribution network,” he said.
