Environment & Energy | Sunday 31 May, 2015 9:31 am |

General Establishment for Water Desalination (GEWD) is implementing new projects, with a total production capacity of up to 2.5 million cubic meters per day in the Makkah Region and the Eastern Province (EP), during the next four years.

"The first project in the Makkah Region includes the establishment of two plants — the first in Jeddah with a production capacity of 400,000 cubic meters, and the second in Rabigh with a production capacity of 600,000 cubic meters to meet the needs of Makkah, Taif and Jeddah,"
Water and Electricity Minister Abdullah Al-Hussayen said.

The minister, who addressed a press conference to announce the results of his meeting with the establishment's board of directors in Yanbu, held in the presence of GEWD Gov. Abdul Rahman Al-Ibrahim and some other members, said the establishment is currently working on presenting the project to the contractor, while the other approved project in Jubail will cover the EP and Riyadh water needs with a capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters per day.

He said that the projects will meet all water needs in the designated areas and are expected to be launched at the end of 2016 and completed by mid-2020.
He pointed out that the ministry has various executive and regulatory water and sewage projects under implementation worth more than SR60 billion but, due to the large expansion of some cities and regions, some citizens and residents may not feel the results of such projects yet.

On the privatization program, the minister said: "It was presented to the Economic and Development Council three weeks ago, and the establishment is currently working to complete all the required documents, especially after the privatization took the right trend."

Al-Hussayen attributed the causes of water outages in some cities to periodic maintenance programs, carried out by some private sector stations. "There were periodic maintenance works in Shuaiba station that led to the lowering of the amount of production to nearly 50 percent, which affected the water supplies in Jeddah."
He lauded the efforts of the National Water Company (NWC) and the GEWD in meeting the shortage of desalinated water from the strategic storage points.