By Steven Enatu
SOROTI CITY
The National Water and Sewerage Corporation has embarked on plans to expand works for the Soroti Water Production Improvement Project, with project contractor Updeal (U) Ltd.
The 6.9billion project will commence in mid-February and run for one year.
Currently the NWSC supplies 5000cubics a day which is literally 5million liters for the five districts in greater Soroti. This does not meet the demand from Kalaki, Kaberamaido and Soroti city.
Speaking to this website in an exclusive interview early this week, the area manager NWSC Soroti Leni Otai said that upon completion the project will improve water supply reliability and increase daily production to Soroti, Kalaki, Amuria and Kaberamaido districts, raising water supply to 10,000million liters per day.
“Greater Soroti area supplies five districts of Soroti district, city, Amuria, Kaberamaido and Kalaki. Our current supply of 5millions liters a day does not meet the demand. There has been a lot of outcry from the people. The good news is that it’s coming to an end with this project,” he said.
The contractor’s scope of work includes increasing the amount of water extracted from Awoja River and increasing the processes of the treatment unit.
“When that water comes from river Awoja, it goes through all these processes, we are going to expand the intake at the bridge and increase the infrastructure-what is called a clarifier where water gets. It will also cover the increase of filters, expansion of clear water wells and another set of pumps that will deliver enough water to the city,” Leni noted.
The project targets to add more 5000 population to the already 138,000 in all the areas of Soroti city and the nearby sub counties of Soroti district with focus on the area of Awoja where water is harvested from. These include, Kamuda, Arapai, Aloet, Asuret, Gweri and Awoja.
“We want to increase 2.5 million liters of water into the city and the surrounding area; we believe that this will enable us to meet the demand for the next 10 to 15 years,” he explained.
Meanwhile Kaberamaido will have a special arrangement but will still be supplied from the plant.
On water scarcity, the area manager said most times they are disturbed by power fluctuation that affects the pumping of water.
“The challenge is mainly power, sometimes you have power but for us here it can’t pump our water, when we have low and high voltage, we can’t pump water. We have a standby generator but it can’t run all our pumps so we hope that the national power provider Umeme will help us resolve that” he stressed.
Leni said the work will not affect water supply but shall be done concurrently as they serve the community with water.
