Young Ethiopian girls have to walk for about four hours a day to carry 20 kilos of water, risking being raped as they make their way through deserted roads.
The installation of a water supply system in the area where they live will mean they can focus on getting an education and be kept out of harm’s way.
Caritas Malta’s €70,000 project to bring water to the Ethiopian districts of Cheha and Enemore was kick-started yesterday with the allocation of €15,000 in overseas development aid given by Malta.
The voluntary organisation was among 18 that received €245,000 between them for projects in Third World countries. The projects range from building classrooms, housing and hospitals to providing water access and fish-farming courses to the poor in Africa, Asia and South America.
Foreign Affairs Minister Tonio Borg handed out the money, ranging between €10,000 and €16,000, to representatives from the organisations. The funds were allocated after the NGOs applied to a call for expressions of interest.
Caritas, the Ghana Mission Foundation, Mission Fund, SOS Malta and Inizjamed were among the organisations that benefited.
Dr Borg said this year, his ministry had a budget of €330,000 to allocate to such projects. Some of the money had been committed last year to projects that spanned over a period of time.
However, the sum did not make up the total that Malta would allocate to the ODA budget this year, he said, adding that the full amount would only be clear at the end of the year. The final figure would include about €300,000 to be spent on climate change projects, scholarships awarded to people from Third World countries and money spent by Malta on immigrants, a ministry spokesman said.
Preliminary figures released by the European Commission in April showed that Malta’s ODA for 2010 dipped to 0.11 per cent of the gross national income, the lowest level since the figures started being published by the EU in 2004. ODA hand-outs totalled €7 million in 2010, €3 million less than in 2009 and 0.06 per cent of GNI short of Malta’s binding commitment.
Malta agreed to binding EU commitments on ODA. By 2010 it was supposed to reach 0.17 per cent of GNI, increasing to 0.33 per cent by 2015.