Fiji faces a deficit of about three million litres of water per day and this is expected to increase to seven million litres per day as a result of the current drought situation, says Deputy Prime Minister Viliame Gavoka.
He said the Asian Development Bank had been very instrumental in providing funding for and ensuring that water storage was more than sufficient for people along the Suva-Nausori corridor.
Mr Gavoka said the Viria water treatment project in Naitasiri should be completed in July this year and once online, it would provide 40 mega-litres of water to those in the Suva-Nausori areas.
“The challenge highlighted by the Prime Minister is in the distribution system – there are a lot of leakages,” the deputy PM said.
“The challenge now going forward is to attend to the leakages and the numbers we are hearing is quite alarming.”
During the launch of the ADB Asian Development Outlook April 2023 report yesterday, regional director of ADB’s Pacific Subregional office in Fiji Aaron Batten said Fiji had a major challenge with access to sufficient water supply.
He said the ADB had been partnering with Fiji since 2017 to expand investment in water supply systems which was currently underway in Viria.
“That project will dramatically increase the water supply to the entire Suva-Nausori corridor,” he said.
“That’s just one of many important investments that need to be made to address the water supply challenges. There are still major issues in the water distribution system that need to be addressed and the Water Authority of Fiji (WAF) has been making good progress in addressing them to reduce the leakages through the pipes.
WAF chief executive officer Dr Amit Chanan recently said 50 per cent of the water piped to households was lost to leakage at huge cost to government.
