Jamaica
News - Real Estate - Services
(Caribbean Net News, May 12, 2005)
Jamaica well advanced in the provision of water
With more than 70 per cent of
Jamaicans having access to piped water, Programme Director for the
Rural Water Programme, Ian Gage, says the Government’s push to
eventually provide the commodity to all Jamaicans, is well on the
way to being a reality.
Through consistent improvements
to the country’s water supply systems, he says Jamaicans, for
the most part, have greater access to piped water than most
nationals in other sister islands in the Caribbean.
Mr. Gage informs JIS News that the
government’s thrust to widen the accessibility of water to the
entire population, is well advanced when compared to other
regions, “we are fairly advanced in terms of access compared to
most of our neighbours [in the Caribbean], and in terms of the
world picture, compared to the situation in say Africa and in
parts of Asia, we are well advanced in terms of access”.
He notes that water access in
Jamaica is far more prevalent than Asia and Africa, as although
not everyone in the island might have piped water, “the key is
to have safe water within a reasonable distance at a reasonable
cost”.
As the government aims to move from
the current 71 per cent to complete access by the citizens within
the next five years, the Programme Director in the Ministry of
Water and Housing indicates that in order “to close the gap, it
will cost in the region of US$2 billion for 100 per cent
access”.
“We are working with a
timeline to have access to water by all by 2010… another 5 years
from now, so that will require a fair amount of effort,” he
tells JIS News.
Mr. Gage says that in the
government’s drive to have full water access by the citizenry,
several projects are underway to implement water supply systems in
areas across the island that are now not being adequately served.
He informs that there are
projects under construction and in advanced design stages in the
parishes of St. Elizabeth, Clarendon, St. Mary and St. Thomas. The
projects, he says, are being implemented through the Water
Ministry’s Rural Water Programme and the Jamaica Social
Investment Fund (JSIF). Upon completion of these projects, he says
the community contractors will be given the responsibility of
operating the water supply systems for a five-year period.
Furthermore, the passage of the
Water and Sewerage Services Act has also diversified the market
and created the environment for private sector interests to become
involved in the provision of water supply systems. The Act
broadens the previously existing NWC Act that made the Commission
the only entity that could distribute and sell water.
“The new Act will open that up
and allow for other persons to be players in the industry and
require that you become a licensed water provider, so you would
actually apply to the Office of the Utilities Regulation (OUR) for
a licence to be a water provider,” Mr. Gage explains.
“So what the Act will do is
provide the legal framework and some amount of protection through
the OUR, in that they are now arbiters and will keep the playing
field level. By having the licence, it protects the entity as a
provider by giving you that guarantee that you are a licensed
person to provide water,” he adds.
Mr. Gage reveals that there are
two licenced private water supply operators in the island, one in
St. Ann and the other in St. Catherine.
He tells JIS News that because most
rural districts, as opposed to urban communities, do not have the
necessary infrastructure in place to have piped water, and are
often located in remote locations, these factors combined to pose
a challenge in the provision of water.
“Rural areas are in fact the
larger challenge from a simple economic point of view. In the
urban areas, you have higher densities of people, so it is more
cost effective per capita to deliver water in your urban areas,
because of that concentration,” he explains.
“In the rural areas, and
especially deep rural areas, communities are sometimes quite far
removed from a source and so there is a long transmission cost in
terms of a pipeline…that’s really just getting water from a
source to the community, before you actually even have
distribution,” Mr. Gage points out.
The Programme Director notes
that another challenge faced when installing water systems in the
island’s interior is the “mountainous condition”.
“This forces us to have expensive
pumping costs in a lot of instances, so the implementation cost is
high in terms of capital investments, but also the operational
costs are sometimes disproportionately high, because of the
requirements to pump over high elevations,” he adds.
Against the background of new
water supply systems that will increase the accessibility of water
to more Jamaicans, Mr. Gage says an important issue that cannot be
overlooked is the issue of sanitation.
He points out that in instances
where the Rural Water Programme or JSIF has put in water supply
systems, “the fact that you now have water means you will
therefore generate waste water, generally in the form of sewage,
and what happens is that in a lot of communities where people have
not had water supply systems, we can’t assume that they know
what these systems are”.
“So, one of the things that we
have to bring to the attention of people, is to sensitise them
about the types of systems we have, the appropriate types of
systems for the circumstances that people are in, and then work
with the community groups through our programmes, and find
resources and funds to assist people to put in place the various
sewerage systems that they need to have, so that they are not
creating a new problem,” Mr. Gage explains.
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