EGYPT PLANS GREAT WATERING SYSTEM

Wanganui Chronicle, 21 December 1950, Page 6

EGYPT PLANS GREAT WATERING SYSTEM

(By HAIG NICHOLSON, Reuters Correspondent in Cairo). Within the next five years, Egypt is to spend £19,000,000 sterling on supplying piped drinking water to 11,000,000. people; particularly those living in the peasant Hinterland of the country. Britain is to contribute £2,000,000 to the scheme from the war-time profits of the Anglo-Egyptian Cotton Buying Commission. A payment of £400,000 has already been made. Work on the scheme will begin next year with an estimated initial expenditure of between £3,500,000 and £4,000,000. The end of the work will mark the completion of one of the biggest and boldest schemes for social improvement ever carried out in Egypt. It is a scheme that has been talked about for many years past. Most of the people in Egypt drink the water of the Nile, which is the country’s mlin source of supply. In the towns and the larger villages, the water is “laid on,” but in the flat green countryside, where the bluk of Egypt’s 20,000,000 population is found, there are no such facilities. The Fellaheen, or peasants, living with their families and farm animals in clusters of mud-hut villages, draw’ their household water from the Nile or the many canals leading from the great river. There, any day can be seen the women and girls of the village, in their long black gowns, washing their pots and pans in one part of a canal and drawing drinking water at a nearby spot. This system obviously entails great danger to health and the Egyptian authorities hope that the new scheme for supplying drinking water to the rural areas will be an important step in removing causes of disease. Anglo-Egyptian co-operation in this ambitious scheme was born during the Second World War. In the summer of 1941, when the usual channels of Egyptian cotton exports were blocked by war, discussions took place about the financing of the next cotton crop. It was eventually agreed that the British and Egyptian Governments should jointly finance purchases from the 1941 crop and a joint Anglo-Egyp-tian Cotton Buying Commission was formed for this purpose. It was further agreed between the two Governments that “certain percentages” of any profits accruing from eventual sales of cotton and cottonseed by the Commission would be applied for the benefit of Egyptian cultivators. Britain stated that she would make her share available to the Egyptian Government for the improvement of the lot of rural workers provided that an equal sum was made available for that purpose by the Egyptian Government. It was subsequently reported that the net profit made by the Commission on its transactions amounted to £E.4,000,000 half o i which went to the Egyptian Government and half to the British Government. Later, after the Cholera epidemic in 1947, in an effort to prevent its recurrence, the Egyptian Government decided to carry out a scheme for the supply of pure drinking water to rural districts throughout the country. The scheme envisaged five major waterworks for the service of the rural population in the northern part of the Delta, with artesian wells for the rest of the rural inhabitants. The cost was originally estimated at £E.16,250,000 with provision for 300,000 tons of piping. A credit of £E.9,000,000 was opened for the purchase of the pipes and the remaining cost of the scheme was to be met from the £E.3,250,000 earmarked for the purpose in the 5-Year Plan and the £E.4.000,000 from profits of the 1941 Anglo-Egyptian Cotton Buying Commission. Now the total cost has increased to £19,000,000.