Rehabilitate facilities for potable drinking water

These obsolete infrastructure prevents the flow of water from the stations. Operators in the sector met yesterday in Yaounde for tracking and leasing of concession contracts.

The 24th session of the leasing contracts Monitoring Committee and the 18th meeting to monitor the concession of public drinking water supply in urban and peri-urban centers of Cameroon was held yesterday in Yaounde.

It was a question for the Minister of Water and Energy, Basile Atangana Kouna, to take stock of the implementation of the action plan for the restoration of economic and financial balance of the lease public service and peri-urban water.

Particularly, the focus was on the main results achieved during the last three years (2012, 2013, 2014) as part of public service delegation contracts in the urban water sector and to make recommendations for improving performance sector.

These sessions took place in a context where the regular supply of drinking water is not yet fully guaranteed. "In Douala, although we have a production capacity of 150 000 m3 of water per day, we can only draw 2/3. There is therefore 1/3 of production that cannot be sold because of lack of facilities. Action is to be taken on the ground."

These actions, according to Gaston Chatué, farm manager of the Cameroon Water (CDE) consist of the rehabilitation of facilities, including transfer lines. "Some of them have become undersized with the growth of cities. It would therefore be necessary to rehabilitated pipes between the station and the network ends where the connections are located for consumer," he said.

The official said that the CRC has issued technical proposals currently under consideration by the Cameroon Water Utilities company (Camwater) for connecting ducts and some extensions and to repair the connection that was destroyed during work on penetrating East of Douala. "With this, Douala will benefit from the entire water capacity available in the station," he announced.

During the last session of the Monitoring Committee in March, some actions were undertaken including the regular payment of water consumption bills by government, the effective disbursement of the investment grant to the concessionaire of Camwater and regulation of positive balances generated for Camwater and CRC at the end of reciprocal debts compensation agreements between the state-Camwater-CDE.