'EMPOWERS' qualifies citizens for better water management
Jordan Times
May 23, 2007
Hani Hazaimeh
AMMAN -- A four-year project implemented by Jordan in cooperation with CARE International, has been educating citizens since 2003 on the best practices in water management to provide sustainable livelihoods for Jordan Valley communities.
The Euro-Med Participatory Water Resources Scenarios Project (EMPOWERS), which concludes next month, also worked to bridge the communication gap between government officials and local citizens on key issues of concern, such as poverty and unemployment.
Director of the CARE International office in Jordan Fadi Shreideh told a group of journalists visiting two of the project's nine sites yesterday, that EMPOWERS works at creating new resources for low-income communities to alleviate poverty in rural areas.
"Over the past four years, the targeted communities developed their own village level vision and water development plans," Shreideh told reporters.
Representatives from the ministries of agriculture, environment, health and water took part in the tour.
Seham Faqir, president of Umm Ayyash Women's Society in the Deir Alla District of the Jordan Valley, said the four-year project had yielded positive results.
"Encouraging results have been achieved as citizens are increasingly able to manage their water resources and improve planning on water availability and its use. They have also learnt to negotiate their needs with government officials," she told The Jordan Times.
Faqir added that the project had supplied the village with a tanker that now delivers water to houses located in steep and isolated areas.
In Rowaiha, Cooperative Society President Yousef Jitawi said the EMPOWERS programme had increased the per capita share of water by 20 per cent, while providing loans to citizens to dig concrete underground sewage tanks to prevent land pollution.
EMPOWERS, a regional programme working in Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank and Gaza, seeks to improve long-term access and rights to water by vulnerable populations.
Jordan's water scarcity remains one of the main challenges to economic development, particularly the agricultural sector, which already consumes 62.4 per cent of available resources.
The Kingdom is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world in terms of water resources, with an annual deficit of around 500mcm.
In order to address this problem, two major projects are being considered.
The first involves importing water from Turkey while the second is the proposed Red-Dead canal, which, if implemented, will increase water availability to Jordan by as much as 850 million cubic metres annually.
Last month, the World Bank invited international companies to bid on a $15.5 million feasibility study to examine the environmental and social impacts of the project on surrounding countries.
The bank said the company that wins the project must submit its report within two years. The eventual construction of the canal is expected to cost around $5 billion.