Water crisis hits Angola

Residents in Angola’s capital Luanda are experiencing water shortage. This has pushed them to depend on water vendors to overcome the city’s wide shortage.

Angola has launched two major projects to double the capacity of water supply to achieve a million cubic metres of water in Luanda.

“At the moment, we have approximately 430,000 cubic meters, which is not enough,” Joao Baptista Borges, Angola’s minister for energy and water said.

Luandan inhabitants are speaking out against the phenomenon.

“It is hard. It is not an easy journey. We have to wake up early in the morning. We then go to search for a place that has clean running water. We buy it from places that have running water in town,” Adriano Correia, a water vendor in Luanda said.

“It is better to shut down the entire Luanda water system. Water is killing children. It is destroying Angolans. All Angolans will die because of the water problem! The water here is dirty. It is not good. It is a state crime,” another resident added.

The unsanitary conditions many poorer Angolans have to endure is not the reality in other areas of Luanda, which is one of the world’s most expensive cities for foreigners and home to generations of billionaire oil magnates and politicians.

The Angolan government has announced that it wants to invite the private sector to invest in power and water services.

“We cannot ensure, we cannot systematically ensure that water provided through the water supply networks to the population or to the water points is being tested regularly, systematically so in most cases water supply is not compliant with WHO standards, standards from the World Health Organization,” Thomas Lopez Bufala, Head of water and sanitation, UNICEF Angola said.

Angola’s budget is forty percent lower than two years ago, as it grapples with low global crude prices.

Angolan officials recently announced that it needed about 29 billion dollars which will enable it meet its development targets by 2025.

Reuters