HAVANA, Cuba, Apr 23 (ACN) Representatives of South Africa and Cuba ratified through a videoconference the validity of the Agreement on Cooperation in Water Resources Management and Water Supply, signed on February 6, 2020, Prensa Latina news agency reported in a dispatch dated in Pretoria.
This understanding, signed in Johannesburg last year, guarantees the continuity of cooperation in this area between the two countries, which began in 2001.
The document signed today virtually and simultaneously in Pretoria and Havana was signed by the South African Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu, and the President of the National Institute of Water Resources of Cuba, Antonio Rodríguez.
In the text, the parties highlighted the achievements made in the deployment in South Africa of highly qualified Cuban specialists (who arrived in August 2020), who are helping as advisors at the provincial, municipal and local levels in the exploitation and efficient and sustainable use of water resources.
They are also involved in the maintenance and management of water supply and sanitation infrastructure, particularly in rural towns and other disadvantaged communities in South Africa.
The signatory parties also emphasized the importance of strengthening international cooperation in these fields, taking into account that the UN has identified the global water crisis as one of the greatest challenges for humanity, and has declared the decade 2018-2028 as the International Decade of 'Water for Sustainable Development'.
Both parties maintain, in the document, that the current South Africa-Cuba cooperation constitutes 'a true example of South-South cooperation and a worthy expression of the legacy of our two great historic leaders, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro'.
Speaking on the occasion, Sisulu stressed that the alliance between the two nations 'is based on fraternal relations', and not on financial contractual ties.
The Cuban engineers, the Minister emphasized, come to help us in rural areas, where there is no drinking water, where we have aging infrastructures.
These professionals, Sisulu explained, are here to transfer skills and experience. They do not occupy any job in the country, all job opportunities in the water and sanitation sphere are for South Africans, she emphasized.
The Cuban hydraulic engineers, he added, are in South Africa for a period of three years, to support us, to train our professionals, and they only receive a stipend for their living needs, he added.
The South African government, the minister summed up, is 'extremely grateful' to the Cuban engineers who have come here to support us, away from their families, to help us, among other things, with failing infrastructure, something in which they have considerable experience.
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