JEDDAH, 19 March 2007 — Water distribution through tankers in Jeddah will be quickened with the launch of a new prepaid card system by Water and Electricity Minister Abdullah Al-Hussayen tomorrow.
The prepaid cards will be available at the Aziziya Water Distribution Center, customer service centers on Hera Street, the Old Airport, Bab Makkah and at Water and Sewage Department collection offices, informed sources said.
To begin with, the new system will be implemented at the Aziziya Distribution Center. It will be introduced later at Briman, Kilo 14, Quwaiza and Rehaili distribution centers. An experimental operation of the system covering 700 houses has been found successful.
The new system is expected to reduce the problem of water distribution in the city, which has a population of four million people including a large number of expatriates.
The system offers a big relief for Jeddah people who end up waiting several hours at distribution centers to buy water tankers during peak seasons, especially Ramadan.
The system will work with the help of a private company, which will send out water tankers whenever requested by customers through a phone call. Saudis and expatriates said such a system would be welcome. The new system will also stop the lucrative black market sale of water tankers.
A small tanker (seven cubic meters) officially costs SR42, a medium tanker (11 cubic meters) SR66 and a large one (19 cubic meters) SR114. Water supplied through the pipeline costs 10 halalas per cubic meter, while the same supplied by a tanker costs as much as SR6.
Understanding the growing demand for water in Jeddah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has instructed Minister Hussayen to double the supply from the Shuaiba desalination plants to Jeddah from 630,000 to 1.3 million cubic meters daily in the next three years. Hussayen, who is chairman of Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC), the main supplier of desalinated water in the country, said his ministry has already made allocations to establish a new plant to supply 150,000 cubic meters of water to Jeddah.
Muhammad Habeeb Al-Bukhari, a water expert at the Water Research Center at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz University, also called on the authorities to take steps to prevent the leakage of water. He estimated the amount of water leaked from pipelines at 35 percent of Jeddah’s total supply.
Bukhari called for more realistic measures to put an end to the city’s recurrent water problem, especially during summer. According to him, per capita water consumption in Jeddah is 250 liters per day.
