Africa-Press – Mozambique. The city of Nampula will from today face water supply restrictions as a result of falling water levels at the dam on the Monapo river which supplies the city, Noticias reports, citing the manager of the Regional Administration of Waters of the North (ARA-Norte).
Carta de Moçambique is also reporting on the water supply crisis in Nampula.
Six months after being hit by a major crisis in the supply of drinking water, the city of Nampula, capital of the province with the same name, is once again facing a crisis, caused by lack of discharge from the only dam that sustains the capital of the northern region of the country.
By last Tuesday, the dam had already reported a possible halt in the discharge of water, a situation that was confirmed on Wednesday, forcing the authorities to introduce restrictions on the distribution of water to consumers. The normal water distribution of 40,000 cubic metres is being reduced to between 30,000 to 31,000 cubic meters.
On Tuesday, a team composed of staff and technicians from the North Regional Water Administration (ARA-Norte), the Water Supply Investment and Heritage Fund (FIPAG) and the National Institute of Meteorology (INAM) headed to the dam to examine the water level and consider distribution capacity, a visit that confirmed that the city of Nampula will be subject to restrictions on the supply of drinking water.
Carlitos Omar, Director General of ARA-Norte, told reporters that, as of this Wednesday or Thursday, “containment” measures will come into force in the supply of water to consumers in the third largest city in the country.
The restrictions, according to the source, will observe three phases. The first will be in force between July and August, during which FIPAG will remove between 30,000 and 31,000 cubic meters from the dam. The second will be from September to October, during which water supply will not exceed 25,000 cubic meters. A putative third phase starts in November and ends in December.
However, depending on the rainfall, the phases may be reassessed.
Mateus Saeze, director of FIPAG in the Nampula Operational Area, reassured Nampula residents that the new water crisis would not be the same as that experienced between October 2020 and January 2021, since a new water supply system should come into operation by August. Built in Namiteca and budgeted at just over 117 million meticais, it could increase capacity by 17% and is already 20% complete.
The city of Nampula has just over 700,000 inhabitants, and its need for drinking water consumption is estimated at 14 billion cubic meters, while the dam has a capacity of just 3.8 billion cubic meters.
