President Filipe Nyusi on 14 June commissioned a new water supply system in the Pussulane resettlement neighbourhood in Marracuene district, 30 kilometres north of Maputo City. The system will ensure access to clean drinking water for over 8,000 people, according to a report carried by the television station, STV.
Budgeted at 22 million meticais (US$343,750), disbursed by the Mozambican government and its partners, the new water plant will also carry drinking water to households who were resettled in Pussulane, following the deadly mudslides, in February 2019, at the Hulene garbage dump on the Maputo outskirts.
Addressing the ceremony, President Nyusi downplayed the repeated and scornful criticism by his detractors of the inaugurations he has been commissioning. "From what we heard, the new system will bring drinking water to 8,000 consumers. It is a motive for great pride for us, but for others, it is just a small system which does not deserve the president's attention," he said.
President Nyusi pointed out that his critics seem to have forgotten that there are a great many small systems scattered across the country within the communities, villages and towns where large numbers of Mozambicans live.
He said there have been enormous improvements in access to water over the past decade. "From 2015 to the present, the proportion of the rural Mozambican population with access to safe drinking water has risen from 38.9 per cent to 56 per cent", he stressed. Access to clean water was thus no longer the privilege of people living in the major urban centres.
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Including both urban and rural areas, the number of people with access to safe water has risen to 65 per cent, which is about 20 million Mozambicans, said President Nyusi.
On behalf of the country's cooperation partners, David Young, the deputy director in the Mozambican office of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom will continue to work in close partnership with the Mozambican government to provide more water and improve sanitation. "For the country's water and sanitation programme, the US Government, through its development agency USAID, is channelling US$20 million for improved access to drinking water and sanitation for over one million people in Mozambique", he said.
The residents of Pussulane trust access to drinking water will bring meaningful social and economic impacts. "The newly inaugurated water supply system will have a great impact on our lives since the long distances we used to walk to fetch water have now been reduced", said a representative of the local community.
The new water plant receives electricity from the public grid and is equipped with solar panels, ensuring a nonstop water supply to the consumers, 24 hours a day.
