15 Dec 2020

The Ministry of Land Management, Water and Sanitation Services does not have short or medium terms plans to construct desalination plants in Werda or Hereford villages in the Kgalagadi South Constituency.

Answering a question in Parliament, Minister Kefentse Mzwinila  said the quality of water from the Werda borehole was within the allowance drinking standards of Botswana of Botswana Bureau of Standards (BOS32:2015) and did not require treatment from a desalination plant.

He also noted that Hereford was currently supplied by single borehole BH11299.

He said the water quality results of the borehole which had a small yield of 4 cubic milliliter / hr showed a fluctuation in salinity results ranging between allowance water drinking standards to slightly above allowance water drinking standards in some months.

The minister also explained that in the short term Water Utilities Cooperation would add an addition water source being Borehole BH6266 (yet another low yield borehole).

He said the water from this additional borehole complied with water drinking standards and had very low levels of salinity.

“The water from BH6266 will be blended with water from BH11299 which will reduce salinity of the current water supplied to Hereford,” he also said.

Regarding Boteti West, he said funding had been secured from the World Bank for constituency works on review of the design and construction works of the Boteti Southern and Central cluster villages  project.

He further highlighted that the existing design of this project was done about 10 years ago. “For this reason a constituency (Saureca /Pula partnership) was engaged to review this design to align it with a revised 20 year design horizon. The consultancy works started in April 2020 and are expected to be completed in February 2021,” he said.

In, addition he said the work would be immediately followed by constructions works around April 2021, and the project is estimated to take 18 months thus completion date is projected to be November 2022.     

Kgalagadi South MP Mr Sam Brooks had wanted an update regarding the construction of water treatment plant or desalination plants in Werda/

Hereford in the Kgalagadi South and Boteti West Constituencies. ENDS