WASH Projects Contribute to Reducing Health and Environmental Impact in Yemen

Some 19.4 million people, of whom 8.2 million people are in urgent need of clean water and sanitation services

The ongoing conflict in Yemen has exacerbated the disruption of provision of water, with 19.4 million people, of whom 8.2 million people are in urgent need of services, still have inadequate access to clean water and sanitation services by July 2017. The armed conflict has also severely affected the infrastructure and has led to the almost complete interruption of the delivery of water services. Over 40% of the sanitation and water facilities in major cities have been destroyed and have now become non-operational, in addition to the interruption of paying basic salaries to the civil service employees, that in turn triggered further reduction in operating water facilities and services.

A large part of the population in the urban areas relies on unsafe water trucking. Due to disruption of WASH services, many cities in Yemen, including Aden and Sana’a, are currently vulnerable to rapid cholera outbreaks. The outbreaks have further affected 21 out of the 23 Yemeni governorates.

“For four years, I have been collecting water from the public water tank, three to four times a day as the water network is not functioning. Sometimes when I am busy, I send my children instead. This takes about four hours,  including the time we queue to fill up the containers.  Sometimes the tank runs out of water before I get my turn” said Um Osamah

In 2017, UNOPS, with funding from the World Bank Group’s International Development Association (IDA), through the Yemen Integrated Urban Services Emergency Project, kicked off a number of WASH projects in a number of governorates. In addition, consultations and coordination for WASH project in urban cities began with the local water and sanitation foundations in the target cities and the relevant authorities in order to facilitate the implementation of projects.

635,000 people today have access to safe water sources and to improved sanitation services provided by the UNOPS project as of October 2019”

As of October 2019, at a total of US$ 20,450,775, some 12 projects were implemented under the sub-project (urban water and sanitation) in Sana’a, Aden and Hodeida cities, while 16 projects are currently underway in 8 main cities, namely, Sana’a, Aden, Hodeidah, Zinjibar, Mukalla, Dhamar, Amran, Dali, Sa’ada and Lahej, and 8 projects are being under designing and tendering processes

The objective of the Yemen Integrated Urban Services Emergency Project is to restore the delivery of vital and life saving services in urban areas in selected cities in the Republic of Yemen, and to reach 1,400,000 beneficiaries throughout the project period. Nearly 635,000 persons are expected to benefit from the  WASH projects that focus on the rehabilitation of WASH medium / large scale facilities.

The project activities include the rehabilitation of water wells, provide and install submersible pumps with accessories (control panels, cables, pipe lifting, generators or solar energy units, pipes and spare parts for the maintenance of water networks, testing equipment for the Sana’a water laboratories, equipment to test and reduce water leakage with meters, maintenance and rehabilitation of some sections of the water systems, in addition to replacing several damaged parts of the old sanitation network of the main and sub lines.  The project also provides pipes, equipment, spare parts to maintain and rehabilitate the sanitation pumping stations and networks. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]