Tanzania has recently launched WaterAid initiative a five-year strategic plan to cover water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) establishment in the country.
The wash initiative is part of the country’s development plan in line with the government’s agenda through to 2020.
Speaking during the launch was the Vice-President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who urged all officials of the managing water and environment projects to work diligently and ensure that the government’s idea of sanitation and access to clean water becomes a reality before 2020.
“I’m calling upon those tasked with managing water projects to increase their efforts to the government can attain its set goals of bringing clean and safe water to the public both in urban and rural areas,” she said.
She said that dedicated efforts of the government and other stakeholders in constructing water infrastructures like dams in dry areas have increased the access to clean and safe water in rural areas immensely.
VP Samia explained the in the month of June 2017 it was recorded that the total number of people who had access to clean water in the rural areas was 22.95m/- people, about 72.58 per cent, in total.
Meanwhile, government’s agenda for the urban areas is to make clean and safe water highly accessible from 86 per cent to 95 per cent in regional headquarters, and 60 to 75 per cent district headquarters, towns, and national project areas, also 72 per cent to 95 per cent in Dar es salaam, she added.
“Alongside those goals, cleanliness of the environment is also important in safeguarding our health from outbreaks such as cholera and typhoid. Aside from clean and safe water, we all must ensure we are surrounded by a clean environment,” she said.
She, therefore, told the people that she believed that the strategic plan will inflate the general access to clean and safe water, and also to help the “helping woman to “take down the bucket of water from her head”.
