PURA has been supporting the Department for over a decade and the recent gesture tends to show its unending efforts to boost the department in its quarterly monitoring of water quality.
Presenting the items, Yusupha M. Jobe, director general of PURA, said the move is to ensure that consumers are supplied with water that is of high quality standard per World Health Organization standards.
“The challenges of maintaining good quality water supply are becoming profound and urgent.” he stated.
DG Jobe indicated that human activities are increasingly contributing to the pollution of the country’s water resources, something he said, is becoming a growing concern both in urban and rural Gambia.
“With that, PURA as the utility regulator for water services signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Water Resources in 2009 to monitor the quality of water supplies by NAWEC across the country.”
Access to safe clean drinking water, DG Jobe argued is a fundamental human right and a key determinant of a nation’s health.
Receiving the items, Omar S.M. Gibba, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Fisheries and Water Resources indicated that freshwater quality is intrinsically linked with human health, poverty reduction, gender equality, food safety and security, livelihoods, and the perspective of ecosystems, as well as economic growth and social development of societies.
“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognises the crucial role of access to water that is safe for human uses and the urgent need to protect the quality of the world’s water resources in achieving many sustainable development goals.” the PS said.
PS Gibba emphasised that water quality problems represent a major challenge, hinting that new threats are emerging such as emerging pollutants from personal care products, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, micro-plastics and industrial and household chemicals.
He thus expressed gratitude to PURA for their intervention, which he said, will further cement the bilateral cooperation that had existed between the Authority and the Department of Water Resources.
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