Government pledges to build 9,600 new village pumps

The government of Mali has pledged to build 9,600 wells and pumps over the next 11 years to improve rural water supplies in this poor and largely arid country.

President Amadou Toumani Toure announced the measure during his new year address to this landlocked nation of 12 million people. He also announced plans to repair 4,500 existing pumps and wells that were damaged or out of use.

According to the government's National Directorate of Water Resources, 62 percent of Mali's rural population currently has access to safe drinking water.

However, Toure noted that nearly 20 percent of the country's 10,907 villages and 965 watering holes for livestock have no modern water facilities whatsoever.

He said the water plan would focus on providing safe drinking water to communities that had relied on pools, streams and hand dug wells.

The National Directorate of Water Resources said in a statement that a third of Mali's existing 14,182 hand pumps were broken and out of action as a result of age, wear and community neglect.

The statement said the quality of water delivered by modern wells and pumps was mostly good. But it noted unacceptably high salt and nitrate levels in some water sources in the desert north of Mali.

While villages rely mainly on wells, boreholes and pumps for safe drinking water, the state-owned utility Energie de Mali provides piped water in 16 of the country's main towns.

Toure said Mali's 2004-2015 water plan had been drawn up on the basis of a study of water resources in the country drawn up over the past two years with financial assistance from the World Bank, France, Germany and Switzerland.