TEHRAN – Iran’s Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian inaugurated 15 water projects worth 60.4 billion rials (about $1.5 million) in the northern province of Gilan during a visit on Thursday.

As reported by IRNA, the projects included the first phase of a project for supplying drinkable water to Malakut Amlash County, water supply to Kinchah County in Astaneh Ashrafieh City and improvement of the quality of supplying drinking water to various villages in the cities of Rasht, Roudbar, Roudsar, Astara, Talesh and Some’e Sara.

The mentioned projects were inaugurated in the 10th week of the implementation of a major program called “A B Iran” [the acronyms A and B stand for water, electricity in Persian”, in which 10 trillion rials (over $238 million) of projects will be inaugurated in each of the country’s provinces, on average.   

Based on the “A B Iran” program, Energy Ministry plans to inaugurate some water, electricity projects across the country every week.

Earlier this week, Ardakanian inaugurated 18 water and electricity projects worth 95.4 trillion rials (about $227 million) during a one-day visit to the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi.

According to the official, in the first half of the current calendar year (March 21-September 22) more than 1,115 villages were connected to the country’s pipeline water network and nine desalination plants were also inaugurated.

Currently, several dams are under construction in Tehran, Ilam, Qom, Yazd, Kerman, West Azarbaijan and Semnan provinces and when operational they will add 745 million cubic meters to Iranian dams’ water capacity, according to the minister.

In late November, Ardakanian said 227 major water and electricity projects worth 331.74 trillion rials (about $7.89 billion) will be inaugurated in the country in the second half of the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 19, 2020).

Over the said period, 1,124 villages would also be supplied with drinkable water and 29 Wastewater treatment plants, over 3,000 megawatts (MW) capacity of thermal power plants and 278 MW capacity of renewable power plants, as well as projects for increasing the efficiency of the country’s agricultural sector through modernizing the irrigation systems, are planned to be inaugurated.

EF/MA