22 May 2009
Maputo — Despite American threats to cut off aid unless Mozambique issues work permits for dozens of American health staff, the largest US aid programme in the country, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), is pressing ahead with funding for development projects in the north of the country.
On Thursday, the MCA and a South African engineering consultancy firm, Jeffares and Green, signed a contract for a viability study and environmental impact assessment on rehabilitating the Nacala dam, in the northern province of Nampula.
The contract, signed by Paulo Fumane, the executive director of MCA-Mozambique, and by Andrew Peperell, director of Jeffares and Green, is for 2.7 million US dollars. The study will last 12 months.
It should allow work on the dam to begin in late 2010. The purpose of the rehabilitation is to stop the dam from leaking, and increase its storage capacity from the current 14 million cubic metres to 21 million cubic metres. It will also modernize the dam's floodgate system, for better flood control.
The dam reservoir is key to the water supply for the port city of Nacala, and it is hoped that the repairs and modernisation will dramatically improve the availability of water in Nacala.
The work on the dam will cost 11.7 million dollars. Expanding the Nacala water supply system adds a further ten million dollars, and rehabilitating the drainage and sanitation system is budgeted at 17.2 million dollars.
According to Susana Saranga, of Mozambique's National Water Board (DNA), currently the Nacala water supply system only reaches 20 per cent of the city's inhabitants. But with the planned repairs and expansion that figure should increase to 70 per cent.
Fumane said that, to avoid water supply constraints during the rehabilitation of the dam, a parallel water supply system will be installed based on two boreholes, capable of pumping more than 200 cubic metres of water a day.
The MCA is run by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an American development agency set up under President George Bush, with bipartisan support in the US congress. After years of discussions, the MCC signed a "compact" with the Mozambican government for 507 million dollars in July 2007.
The compact did not, however, enter into force until September 2008. 203.6 million dollars will be spent on water and sanitation projects, of which the Nacala dam is one. 176.3 million dollars is earmarked for transport projects, 39.1 million for land tenure services, and 17.4 million for a farmer income support project.
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