THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Water now says it’s happy with the way a project on Lake Victoria waters was designed to benefit Kishapu residents in Shinyanga Region.
The
Chairperson, Ms Mary Nagu, who was recently in the region at the head of a
parliamentary committee hailed the project as a ‘life saver’ to hundreds of people,
especially women who had to struggle every day just to fetch a few litres of
the precious liquid.
“We’re very
pleased with the completion of this project ... the residents of Kishapu will
now smile as they spend less time searching for water,” she said.
The project
implemented by ICS, a local organisation now complete, but supply still awaits
approval of pump price to be decided by the district authorities and approved
by the regulator, Ewura. Kishapu Water Engineer Lucas Said explained that
evaluation on the price of the precious liquid is at final approval.
He admitted
that despite the completion of the project, residents are still walking miles
to access water at the price of 500/- per 20 litres.
But during
inspection of the project, the Bunge committee directed the implementing
company, ICS to start selling the water at the price of 30/- per litre pending
approval from the water regulator, Ewura.
Assistant
engineer with ICS, Ms Lucy Charles, revealed that her firm would invest in new
technology to connect all the customers and that from now on, customers would
access water on prepaid service or “pay as you use.”
“They will buy
their own vouchers on demand,” she quipped. ICS spent over 755m/- to implement
the project with support from HDIF and UK Aid.
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