ICRC provides drinking water for 15,000 residents of Uvira

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has rehabilitated a long-defunct water network to provide safe drinking water to some 15,000 residents in the town of Uvira in South Kivu Province of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the agency reported on Wednesday. The gravity-fed system, which was first installed in the Kalundu neighbourhood in 1958, was badly damaged in 1991 following a massive landslide. Since then, residents have had to draw water directly from Lake Tanganyika or the Kalimabenge River. The installation of a new system, which began in September 2001, involved the support of a water company, Cooperation Hydraulique Rurale, and the government water department, Regideso. ICRC said the system taped two sources of water, which flowed through a network of 5,851 m of galvanised steel piping, and includes six reservoirs.