|
Sierra Leone is one country in the world which is yet to have a Country Water Partnership (CWP) which aims to contribute to the improvement of Water Resources Management (WRM) in the country.
Speaking in a conference past December, Dr. Bashiru M. Koroma, disclosed that WRM seeks to support pro-poor, marginalized rural communities to improve on the access to water resources management, water supply and sanitation, through low-cost, affordable, bottom-up and sustainable approaches.
He added that it also contributes to identifying, demonstrating and disseminating approaches that remove socio economic, policy, institutional and knowledge barriers to water resources management.
Dr. Basiru M.Koroma also said the national platform shall be under the supervision of a governing body that shall be known as Country Water Partnership.
“We should however, not lose sight of the fact that lack of access to portable water supply in Sierra Leone is of great concern as less than 20% of the Urban Areas have access to portable water. The situation is worse in Rural Areas where less than 5% have access to portable water supply,” said Dr. Koroma.
Mr. Reginald Thomas, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, stated that Sierra Leone is endowed with vast water resources consisting of both surface and ground water with an abundance of rainfall. Adding that its water resources are however threatened from population growth, increased industrial and unsustainable mining activities in some parts of the country, deforestation causing soil erosion, threats to inland valley swamps wetlands, and population of rivers.
“Thus in spite of the country’s water resources potential, there are constraints on water availability including difficulty-to-access water sources, poor quality surface sources, limited capacity for ground water abstraction, inaccessible water tables during certain periods of the year, inadequate funding to meet the challenges in abstraction and delivering, poor community attitude towards development intention,” said Mr. Thomas.
http://www.awoko.org/2012/01/10/sierra-leone-to-establish-country-water-partnership/
|
