Venezuela reaches to provide drinking water to 7 million people

ABN.- Up to 7 million of Venezuela citizens has reached to access the drinking water service in the last eight years, thanks to a historic investment made by the national government through the Ministry of People's Power for the Environment (Minamb), with the goal of reaching 100% of covering for providing this service in a middle-term.

The figures were given by the Vice- Minister of Water, Cristobál Francisco, for the celebration of the World Water Day, this Saturday 22.

Francisco stressed that Venezuela has reasons to celebrate the World Water Day because on the last ten years, the country fulfilled with the Millennium Goals established by the United Nations (UN).

The Millennium Goals demanded to the UN member states to reduce in a half the number of people in the world without access to drinking water and basic cleaning-up for year 2015.

'The fulfillment of the Millennium Goals includes to incorporate more than 7 million people to the cleaning-up services and more than 6 million habitants to drinking water networks with a covering of 95% in urban zones and 79% in rural zones; the goal is to reach the 100% capacity for year 2010,' the Vice-Minister explained.

The slogan for this year of the World Water day for the UN was ' the cleaning-up cares'. In this sense, Venezuela shows important achievements in this field.

According to the figures, 82 per cent on water cleaning-up has been reached so far; the covering of sewage sing collection was 62% in 1999 while in 2008 it is 82%.

The sewage sing treatments gave a huge jump from 9% in 1999 to 27% nowadays. These achievements have been reached for an investment labeled by Vice Minister Cristóbal Francisco as ' historic'. The investment is about Bs F. 6 billion ( about $ 2.8 billion).

Nowadays, several mega projects on water cleaning-up have been carried out, such as Río Guaire and Valencia and Maracaibo lakes. The basins to be drained are rivers Tuy, Motatán, Tórbes, Albarregas, Turbio and Orituco.

Furthermore, in the last nine years have been organized 5,760 water technical tables and 2,300 conservationist committees, which work on the preservation of forests and basins based on the new culture of water for its rational and sustainable consumption, ' without ignoring the clear conscience that the water and forests are very desired by the huge transnational companies that seek their privatization at the expense of human life.'