In Morocco, which in recent years has been hit by the worst drought in decades, more and more people have received clean drinking water. An example of that is a project that the World Bank has just concluded together with the government of Morocco. 1.1 million Moroccans in more than 2,000 remote villages have received “safe and clean drinking water” – that is, it is protected against contamination, especially against bacteria from toilets and latrines, so that you do not get sick from drinking the water, writes the World Bank. – The benefits of ensuring clean drinking water for Morocco’s remote areas are clear. It lowers the impact of disease from unclean water and saves the inhabitants from spending time fetching water from far away, says Carolina Dominguez-Torres, who is a Senior Water and Sanitation specialist at the World Bank. Before, the inhabitants of the villages had to drink impure water, which could be used to irrigate the soil, but which was not necessarily safe to drink. Or they could fetch clean water from wells far away. That work often falls to girls and women, and it can take many hours to walk up to 10 kilometers back and forth to collect water, which in turn goes beyond the school. Good for health But water has now been added to thousands of villages in several northern regions. The World Bank’s project is not the only effort to ensure clean drinking water in the country. Morocco has long worked to ensure its citizens their right to water. In 2000, only slightly more than half of Morocco’s population had safe access to clean water. In 2020, it had risen to four out of five Moroccans. Many children die from diarrheal diseases, which are spread by unclean drinking water, poor toilet conditions and lack of hygiene. In Morocco, almost 12,000 children under the age of five died from diarrheal diseases in 1990 – that had fallen to less than 1,000 in 2019.
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Millions get clean water in Morocco
