The Water Resource Minister in Ethiopia has announced that the Government plans to expand the provision of clean, safe water and sanitation services, covering every inhabited area within the next five years.
According to the minister, the safe water service coverage of the country has reached to 66.2 percent at present from a level of only 20 percent two decades ago. He reported that Ethiopia has made remarkable progress in recent years towards attaining the Water Millennium Development Goal and that provision of clean water is very much at the heart of their development strategies.
This is an ambitious but highly commendable aim and one which we at Link Ethiopia also have as a major focus in our work with schools. When a school does not have easy access to a supply of clean water, it means that children and teachers cannot concentrate fully on their tasks, that the contraction of disease is frequent, and that there is no real possibility of making the school a clean and healthy environment.
Link Ethiopia has put new water sources into a large number of schools in the past few years and this is always one of the priorities when talking with school communities about their needs.