Water project short of Sh220bn

Villagers queue for water in Handeni in Tanzania.PHOTO | FILE

Dar es Salaam.The government is short of $135 million (Sh216 billion) needed to supply water by 74 per cent in rural areas by 2015.

Speaking at a water sector development forum yesterday, the minister for Water, Prof Jumanne Maghembe, said the total amount needed to implement all water projects had amounted to $457 million (Sh731.2 billion), out of which the government had committed $322 million(Sh515.2 billion).

“The deficit of $135 million is a challenge to implement the projects in order to attain the set targets by 2015. But development partners have pledged to assist us,” said Prof Maghembe after opening the meeting.

Speaking at the forum, World Bank country director Philippe Dongier, said despite the financing gap there were still a number of challenges facing the water sector, including lack of proper co-ordination with other related sector such as agriculture, environment and natural resources management, financial management and projects sustainability in rural areas.

Mr Dongier said there was a need to ensure the water sector was properly co-ordinated with other sectors to ensure water resources benefit the majority of Tanzanians for domestic, industrial use and supply of energy.

According to the latest report by the Water Sector Development Programme released at the forum to stakeholders, the MDG target for water supply coverage in rural areas was supposed to increase by at least 1.5 per cent annually since the year 2000 (the millennium summit year), which implies that it was supposed to increase from 51 per cent in 2000 to 55.9 per cent in 2003 up to 66.4 per cent in 2010 so as to attain 74 per cent in 2015, but data analysis by the government has shown that coverage had reached 57 per cent in 2012.

“This means that in order to meet the MDG target by 2015 more efforts are needed to cover the remaining 17 per cent of people without access to water services.

Under the 2013/14 water budget the government had earmarked Sh379.4 billion for development expenditure for the sector, and out of which Sh138.26 billion were expected to come from foreign sources and Sh241.17 billion from domestic sources.