Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hani Sweilem has participated in a workshop on issuing a work plan for the first component of the Water-JCAR Applied Research Programme between Egypt and the Netherlands to evaluate the impact of irrigation development and scientific innovations on the water sector.
In his speech during the workshop, Sweilem thanked the JCAR programme team for the efforts made previously and called for more efforts in the future within the program’s activities.
He also praised the long history of cooperation between Egypt and the Netherlands in the field of water since the seventies of the last century, which culminated in the signing of the “Joint Cooperation Agreement in the Applied Research Program Water-JCAR,”.
The project aims to achieve coordination and cooperation between the National Center for Water Research of the Ministry and the Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Dutch Environmental Research Institute Wageningen, the Dutch Environmental Assessment Committee, and the Dutch Deltars Foundation.
Sweilem further referred to the support provided by the Dutch side to the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation to deal with water challenges in the future by promoting planning, development and integrated management of water resources, developing strategies, and working to develop the capacities of specialists and researchers in the field of water through strengthening the partnership between the Egyptian and Dutch institutes.
Moreover, the minister stressed the need for applied research to focus on dealing with the challenges facing the water sector on the ground, and to provide proposals for solutions that contribute to resolving these challenges, pointing to the importance of focusing research on identifying appropriate technologies at the field level to be implemented in experimental areas and to study the impact of the irrigation project.
He also pointed out working on reusing agricultural wastewater on the water system in an integrated manner, with an emphasis on the importance of achieving sustainability in all the ministry’s projects (financially and institutionally) to ensure their continuity and achieve their desired goals.
Nevertheless, the minister stressed the importance of providing the necessary training for workers in the field of water, especially young engineers and researchers in the ministry, with the trainees transferring the experiences gained during training to their peers of engineers and researchers.