Access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) situation is expected to improve for residents of Lilongwe City following the successful raising and rehabilitation of Kamuzu Dam I at Malingunde in the outskirts of the city.
President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera is scheduled to officially commission of the dam whose raising and rehabilitation work was financed to the tune of EUR20 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the Lilongwe Water Resources Efficiency Programme.
The Malawi Government and Lilongwe Water Board (LWB) have contributed EUR7 million mainly towards compensations for project affected persons and reconstruction of infrastructure affected by the new water levels.
The raising and rehabilitation work has seen the capacity of the dam being increased to 25 million cubic metres from five million cubic metres.
In a public statement released to the media, LWB said the completion of the rehabilitation work marks a significant milestone in the board’s commitment to enhance water supply and security for its customers in the Capital City and surrounding areas.
“The raising and comprehensive rehabilitation of the dam is a strategic initiative aimed to address the increasing water demands of Lilongwe’s growing population and ensuring sustainable water supply. Among others, the raised dam is poised to bring in new infrastructure development for LWB such as the construction of a new Treatment Works 3 to add an additional production capacity of 50, 000 cubic metres per day to the existing production capacity of 125, 000 cubic metres per day,” reads the statement in part.
It adds that the implementation of the Malingunde waster supply system, a 5, 000 cubic metres per day water supply system abstracting raw water from the rehabilitated and raised Kamuzu Dam I, will serve residents of Malingunde and Bunda Campus of the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR).
LWB commended its stakeholders, especially EIB and the Government of Malawi, for providing unwavering support to the project.
It expressed commitment to ensuring that the raised and rehabilitated Kamuzu Dam 1 continues to serve as a beacon of sustainable water management and contributes to the prosperity of Lilongwe, in particular, and Malawi at large as the country moves towards achieving Malawi 2063 Agenda.
