70 per cent of Kingdom’s strategic water resources under surveillance — ministry

AMMAN — Seventy per cent of the country’s strategic water resources are now monitored around-the-clock to detect malfunctions and violations, an official at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation has said.

Fifty of the country’s strategic water resources, including the main dams, wells, pumping stations and reservoirs, are now connected via cameras and control systems to a recently established centre in order to monitor and remotely control operations of the water resources, according to the ministry.

“The centre monitors the vital water resources to safeguard the country’s water security. Seventy per cent of the sensitive water resources are connected via cameras to the centre and are monitored around-the-clock,” the director of the ministry’s Water Demand Management Department, Awni Kloub, said.

The ministry seeks to reach 100 per cent coverage of all the water resources across the country within the next few years, Kloub highlighted.

The centre uses monitoring screens to supervise the strategic water locations chosen and categorised according to the National Policies Council’s standards for water resources, using an early warning system. The ministry also indicated that, over the next three years, more highly trained employees would be assigned to monitor all 450 water locations.

Prime Minister Hani Mulki inaugurated the centre late last month and launched a unified phone number for water complaints (117116).

On its website, the ministry explained that the monitoring centre observes the quality and quantity of water resources, and that any technical errors are then resolved through these systems. The centre will also protect the water resources by detecting violations.

The ministry added on its website that it had opened the centre seven months after a directive by His Majesty King Abdullah.

The centre will be connected to the National Centre for Security and Crisis Management and will provide technical data around-the-clock.

The centre complimented the ministry’s national campaign to end all violations on water resources, under which over 27,000 violations on the water resources and networks have been removed since its launch in 2013.