Indah water signs MoU in Africa

Indah Water Konsortium Sdn Bhd has signed a memorandum of understanding with Water Sanitation for Africa (WSA), a pan-African inter-governmental agency, to provide technical know-how and consultancy services in sewerage management in African countries.

Chief Executive Officer Datuk Abdul Kadir Mohd Din said Indah Water was selected by WSA to be in a technical committee formed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to propose immediate, medium- and long-term solutions for sanitation services in WSA member countries.

"We have been selected to share our experience with developing nations, and WSA is now interested in our expertise to develop their sewerage facilities," he said in a media briefing today.

Abdul Kadir said WSA was given a grant by the foundation to come up with economic and financial models that can scale up sanitation services and extend them to the poor.

He said the foundation had sent a team of wastewater experts from the United States to visit Indah Water after visiting the African continent and Asean countries.

"Indah Water is well known in exploring for steadfastly implementing green technology and innovation in bio-technology, nano-technology and microbiology.

"Those are some of the reasons why many wastewater industry practitioners from this region and the Middle East have sought to learn from Indah Water via its capacity building initiatives," Abdul Kadir said.

Indah Water had provided WSA advice at the initial stage, adding that in African countries, some 6,000 children die every day from diarrhoea due to the poor sewage system.

"Indah Water will always support African governments to improve their sewerage management to enable them to keep pace with the fast growing urban population," he said.

Indah Water, a sewerage services company, is responsible for providing sewerage services, operating and maintaining over 5,919 sewage treatment plants and a 15,983 km network of sewage pipelines serving a connected population equivalent of 20 million.