The ambassadors of Germany and France in Cairo, as well as the Deputy Head of EU Delegation to Egypt, visited on Wednesday a newly built wastewater treatment plant in Al Sawaleh city, Sharqeya governorate.
The visit celebrates the successful cooperation between the Egyptian and European authorities in the water and wastewater sector.
The visitors were accompanied by Deputy Governor of Sharqeya, Ahmed Abdelmoaty; Amr Nassef, the Head of International Cooperation of the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater (HCWW); and members of parliament.
The new plant, which cost around €20m, will connect more than 250,000 people to the sewage network for the first time, significantly improving people’s health in the region.
This strategic project for Sharqeya governorate comes under the Improved Water and Sanitation Programme (IWSP), consisting of more than 70 projects to modernize and extend the existing infrastructure in order to improve the access and quality of water and sanitation services for at least 4 million of inhabitants in four Delta governorates, namely Beheira, Damietta, Gharbeya, and Sharqeya. IWSP is close to completing almost all its projects, in coordination with the HCWW and the affiliated companies of these governorates.
IWSP is a European initiative shaped as a model of joint action and coordination between different European development partners, with a total of €295m in funding jointly provided by the German development bank KfW, as lead financier on behalf of the German government, the French development agency AFD, the European Union, the European Investment Bank, and the Egyptian Government.
