Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama says a broken water system is a health disaster waiting to happen.
While speaking at the dedication of the Tavuki Water Project in Kadavu today, Bainimarama said water must be kept pure and safe, and that requires the government to constantly monitor and assess the systems that are in place.
He says they need to be sure that the systems are resilient and will continue to function through storms and other natural disasters but they also need to be sure that they continue to function properly even when they are not under stress.
Bainimarama says the government is quickly moving toward it’s goal of ensuring that all Fijians have reliable, safe drinking water.
He says it is the Government’s aim and commitment to close the gap in the standard of living between the urban and rural areas of Fiji, and clean drinking water is fundamental to good health and a high standard of living.
Bainimarama says he has gone to some villages that have had very crude and basic systems for delivering water, he has been to others that had to bring in water by boat and he has also been to other villages that have had systems that simply needed to be modernized and upgraded.
The Prime Minister says this is what they are doing in Tavuki. He says it is simply not enough to put a water system in place and then forget about it until it breaks down and needs to be fixed urgently.
He says this new system was tested during Tropical Cyclone Harold, and it emerged with only minor damage.
The Prime Minister says Harold did not take the water supply off in Tavuki because it had been secured through better infrastructure.
He says water systems age, too, and when they do, we need to fix them.
Bainimarama says this is what the Water Authority of Fiji has done here as for years, people in Tavuki have had to suffer intermittent water supply.
He also says they now have a new storage tank and they will no longer have to carry water in buckets.
