allAfrica.com: Cameroon: Nation Commemorates Water Day (Page 1 of 1)

Cameroon joined the international community over the weekend to commemorate the 16th World Water Day with a call for every one to help promote access to safe drinking water in the country.

While presiding at activities to commemorate the day in Yaounde, the Secretary General at the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, Fritz Gerald Nasako, underscored the importance of water and sanitation while highlighting government's actions in promoting the two. Sanitation, he said, is as important as the provision of safe drinking water in various communities in the country. That is why the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources has put in place rural and urban water policies geared towards providing potable water to the population. Fritz Gerald Nasako said this is to make the slogan "water is life" real in Cameroon.

Statistics from UNICEF indicate that safe water is fundamental to human life, yet more than 1 billion people do not have access to it. Another 2.6 billion live without basic sanitation. As a result, thousands of children die every day from diarrhoea and other water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases. With the increasing expansion of towns, the Secretary General said the problem of sanitation is an acute one. That is why the government has come up with policies integrating the aspect of supplying potable water and that of sanitation. In this light there is a major sanitation project for the town of Yaounde known in its French acronym as PADY. The station which collects and treats waste water in Yaounde will soon be rehabilitated. There are several projects aimed at tackling the supply of water while tackling sanitation in several rural and urban areas in the country. Water systems in other towns in the country will be rehabilitated. In rural areas there are centres for the provision of sanitation at low cost. The Ministry of Energy and Water Resources also promotes the construction of latrines, the use of techniques in treating waste water in rural areas.

In a message on the occasion, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, said this year's World Water Day coincides with the international year of sanitation which challenges everybody to spur action on a crisis affecting more than one out of three people on the planet. According to him, this year's Water Day has gone beyond raising awareness but pressing for action to make a measurable difference in people's lives.

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