Water Taskforce Announces its Findings in a Seminar at Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Knowledge Forum

29 Sep 2013   AMMAN ---- September 29, 2013----Jordan Economic Observatory, under the umbrella of the Economic Policy Development Forum (EPDF), held a seminar at the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Knowledge Forum to discuss the Water Taskforce report, one of the Observatory teams. The seminar was moderated by Ms. Reem Badran, EPDF Vice President, and attended by a host of specialists and experts.
 
Engineer Mohammad Al Najjar, Team Leader of the Water Taskforce, presented an overview of the report’s contents and tackled the amount of water available, annual per capita drinking water, and wastage rate, as compared with several countries. In addition, the report pointed to the use of water by the various sectors, the cost of drinking water and sanitation, agriculture and traffic areas.
 
Engineer Al Najjar summarized the dilemma of water in Jordan, as contained in the report, through four key points, namely; Management, since there is a need to support this sector with qualified cadres of engineers, technicians, administrators, legal experts, financial experts, and economists specialized in the subject of water economy. Laws and legislations, since such laws and legislations are not enforced in most cases, especially those related to groundwater. Furthermore, some laws and legislations need to be reviewed and updated to suit the variables and control both quantity and quality. Funding: the sector suffers great losses accumulating each year due to the lack of ongoing support by the government and this limits the sector's ability to finance important projects and provide sustainability and maintenance to the existing facilities. Finally, the fourth point is the development of new traditional and non-traditional resources.
 
The report concluded with several significant recommendations focusing on rebuilding administrative, technical, engineering, financial, economic and legal capacities in the water sector, and establishing a new institutional structure for the water sector, based on the studies that have been prepared previously by private bodies and companies, to reorganize the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI), the Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ) and the Jordan Valley Authority (JVA). Focus should be on change management and capacity building, provided that the output is to enhance responsibility and authority, remove overlap of activities, bridge the gaps, and implement the rehabilitation projects of pumping stations in all regions to generate electric power, based on the study prepared in 2012, in addition to the implementation of the redistribution plan of water resources among the governorates for domestic purposes and between other economic sectors based on their economic returns.
 
Moreover, the adoption of multiple water tariffs linked to the cost of water supply for each governorate in order to reflect the true cost in each region, while retaining the support for the poor classes, and determining water quantities allocated for agriculture and linking them to the areas allowed for irrigation, the minimum types of plantings depending on the seasons and years, in addition to the reliance on modern technology for irrigation, delivering water on continuous basis, and quitting interrupted supply in order to ensure the reduction of capital cost, provision of electricity, and sustainability of water facilities.
 
As for the indicators reached by the report, Engineer Al-Najjar explained that they are represented in: the application of fair distribution of water among the citizens by not less than 60 liters and no more than 120 liters per day, and of electrical energy per cubic meter of water of no more than 4 K/h, since it now exceeds 6 K/h. This can be realized by changing the distribution method, raising the efficiency of networks and pumping plants, reducing water losses by 2-3% per year, provided that it does not exceed the proportion of 18% of water losses in the networks over the long term (15 years), and the distribution of water is to be on continuous basis and not interrupted.
 
In addition, there should be no kind of diseases related to water, whether in quantity or quality, and the efficiency of water use in economic activity should be raised as measured by production per meter and the number of employees. Also, there is a need to reduce the sector’s debts by reflecting the true cost and modifying the tariffs for drinking and irrigation water, as well as licensed groundwater, maximizing underground reserve through the shutting down of unlicensed wells and determining the amount of water for licensed ones, as well as raising the proportion of usage treated water for the total water allocated for agriculture and expanding agriculture at the expense of treated water and not fresh water after reducing the amount of pumping from the canal for drinking purposes.
 
During the seminar, various inputs, interventions, questions and suggestions were presented and Engineer Al- Najjar answered all inquiries.