Qatar Charity (QC) has established a desalination plant in Bangladesh for the benefit of more than 20,000 people.
This comes as part of QC’s continued efforts to implement projects in countries where people suffer from shortages in and scarcity of water, the organisation has said in a
statement.
The Paigasa Desalination Plant produces around 80,000 litres of water for drinking and home use purposes. The project cost QR200,000.
Khalid al-Yaf’i, director of operations management at QC’s Executive Management, said: “Through such projects, QC aims to lessen the negative impacts of drought and use of polluted water, which helps enhance public health.”
Al-Yaf’i also noted that QC owned a number of excavators that are used for drilling deep artesian wells in Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger. “QC recently signed a co-operation agreement with the German company, Buhak, to improve the technologies used in extracting water in Africa. It also implemented a project for manufacturing and importing two excavators for Somalia and Mauritania at a cost of QR3,378,612,” he added.
Dr Mohamed Amine Hafith, director of QC’s office in Bangladesh, said: “Although there is plenty of water in the southwest of Bangladesh, it is extremely salty. As a result, people living in these areas find it difficult to get drinking water and water for home use.”
He said QC tried to fix the situation and took up the drilling of thousands of deep artesian wells as a first step. The wells were more than 300m deep. “That was not enough, however, for responding to all the demands. Some areas lacked drinking water even after digging thousands of metres in the ground. After a careful study, QC was able to find other alternatives to meet the needs of these areas.
“It had two options: to bring water from tens of kilometres away through pipes or establish water desalination plants. It was agreed that QC would establish the plants because the other option was very expensive and required a lot of time.”
QC has drilled more than 7,000 artesian wells in Bangladesh at a cost of over QR20,000,000. Around 1,000,000 people benefit from these wells. In addition, it has implemented 12 projects for irrigation and drinking water at a cost of around QR2,000,000.
These projects have been implemented for people living in dry areas in the northwest of Bangladesh. From October until April, these areas suffer from drought and lack irrigation and drinking water. As a result, the people’s sufferings and needs increase.
In order to overcome such problems, QC drilled the wells, supplied them with networks and provided the necessary equipment for water connection with their plots as well as for the irrigation of their farms and drinking purposes.
Thousands of water wells are being drilled for similar purposes there and expected to be completed sometime this year.