COTE D’IVOIRE – Côte d’Ivoire’s Minister of Hydraulics, Laurent Tchagba has inaugurated a new drinking water supply system (AEP) in Zorofla, a village located in the sub-division of Kanzra.

Speaking during the project’s commissioning, Laurent Tchagba, said that the system will improve access to drinking water in the Village which had for a long time got it water supply from ponds, well, or from outdated human powered pumps.

The newly commissioned water supply system comprises of a groundwater pumping system that that delivers waters to a 50 m3 water tower.

The water is distributed to the population through eight standpipes connected to the water tower (12 m high) by a network of pipes.

 Ivorian state officials revealed that the West African country invested nearly 93 million CFA francs (around US$166,000) for the implementation of this project.

The water project in Zorofla is part of a program launched by the Ivorian government in 2013 called the Water and Sanitation Programme for the Millennium (Pham).

The program aims to improve access to water and sanitation in Ivory Coast through the construction and rehabilitation of at least 100 water systems.

SO far, 100 villages in 3 of the country’s districts have benefited from water and sanitation projects implemented under the program.

In the long term, the program is expected to benefit about 1 million people, 350,000 will have increased access to water while 650,000 others will benefit from improved sanitation.

The cost of the programme amounts to 18 billion CFA francs (nearly US$32.20 million) and is being financed by a number of partners led by the European Union.

The EU is supporting the programme with with 16.3 billion CFA francs (about US$29.16 million) while the Government of Côte d’Ivoire’s is providing 754 million CFA francs (nearly US$ 1.35 million) for the project.

Other financiers include Unicef and the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the German development agency based in Frankfurt.

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