The National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NW&SC) has embarked on construction of a new water treatment plant in Katosi.
The NW&SC Managing Director, Dr. Silver Mugisha, revealed that the three-phase project will increase the water supply in an effort to improve efficiency of water supply in Kampala and the neighbouring districts to bridge the demand gap.
Interfacing with the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources (PNRC), Dr. Mugisha said that work commenced after completing the project feasibility study, designs, procurement of the contracts and transmission mains. The new Katosi Water Treatment plant is expected to be completed by December 2020. It will be produce 160 million litres to supplement the 230 million liters of water from the Ggaba Water Treatment plant. Currently it is producing 230 million litres against the demand of 250 million liters per day. “People of Kampala will have water for the next 15 years without interruptions,” Mugisha said.
The PNRC chairperson, also the Kiboga East Member of Parliament (MP), Kefa Kiwanuka, pledged to ensure that the Ministry of Finance allocates more funds to NW&SC to supplement the Euro 44.7 million it has already received from the development partners for the project.
The PNRC committee members also tasked the NW&SC to ensure the tourism regions are connected the national water grid. Ruhinda MP, Thomas Tayebwa, said that various hotels in his region do not have access to safe water which puts the lives of the tourists that visit the country and other Ugandans at risk. He challenged the NW&SC to have all tourism regions connected to water system if the country is to avert the huge economic implications of having no access to safe water.
“I have done these tourism circuits but they do not have water, they carry water by trucks from the other side of Kanungu and now the water they bring from that side is good enough, so my fear is, it will end up causing diseases to some of the tourists and this will endanger the reputation of the country,” he said.
Mugisha replied that under the Service Coverage Acceleration Program (SCAP 100), the corporation will ensure that all gazetted areas will be connected to the national water grid; and it is ready to give technical advice to potential clients that cannot access the grid. “The tourism sites which are close to us [NW&SC] will easily connect to our systems. For the ones which far from our systems, I think we will have to work with to give them technical know-how, to establish their own water supply systems,” he added.
