'Installation of new water networks in northern Amman to start next year'

AMMAN — Implementation of a 50 million euro project to install new water and waste-water networks in the capital's northern parts will commence next year, government officials said Saturday.

Under the three-phase project, new water and wastewater pipes and networks will be extended in the Sha-fa Badran and Yajouz areas to improve water supply to over 100,000 people and protect the areas' springs and underground water from pollution, Water Minister Hazem Nasser said in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times.

Nasser noted that the ministry secured the cost of the project via a soft loan from the German Development Bank (KfW). An official at the ministry, who preferred to remain unnamed, said the ministry will float the project's tender on Sunday.

"The ministry will announce the project's tender in local newspapers on Sunday. Implementation is expected to start during the second quarter of 2016, while the three-phase project is scheduled to end in 2020," the official told The Jordan Times.

In the statement, Nasser also said that studies are under way to shut down and relocate the Abu Nseir wastewater treatment plant in the north of the capital. He added that a main wastewater carrier will be extended soon to con-vey 4,000 cubic metres of wastewater per day to the treatment plant west of Zarqa, which will later pump sewage to As Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant.

"A total of 64 per cent of the population is linked to the sewerage network. The ministry's national plan seeks to raise the number of people linked to the sewer-age network to more than 70 per cent before the year 2020," Nasser said.