Borehole registration deadline extended
WATER Resources Management Authority (WARMA) has extended the deadline for registration of boreholes from September 30, 2018 to March 31, 2019, acting director general Lemmy Namayanga has said.
Mr Namayanga said in a statement yesterday that the deadline had been extended because of the overwhelming response in the last two weeks of the deadline of people wanting to register their boreholes. He said WARMA had so far registered 10,106 existing boreholes following the issuance of Statutory Instrument No. 20 on regulating groundwater and boreholes. "The extension only affects registration of existing boreholes drilled before the regulations came into being. WARMA will penalize anyone found drilling without authority," Mr. Namanyanga said. Mr. Namanyanga said 93 drilling companies had so far been licensed and a total of 5,152 applications to drill boreholes were made in which 15 were rejected. He said the statistics cover the current national status of the borehole registration exercise which started on March 9, 2018 following the issuance of the Statutory Instrument. WARMA was putting in place measures to facilitate easy registration and inspections of boreholes countrywide, he said. And Mr Namayanga also said that the requirement for applicants to submit coordinates of their boreholes was intended to capture the exact position of the boreholes to regulate against drilling within a 30 meters radius between boreholes in an effort to protect the water resource from depletion. He said the essence of the coordinates was to capture the position of a particular borehole, as the law did not allow the drilling of boreholes within a 30 meters radius. "It is only the coordinates that will give an idea of where that borehole will to be drilled. And we can assess if there is an existing borehole within a radius of 30 meters, the idea is to manage the resource," he said. Meanwhile, WARMA Acting Director for Water Resources Management and Information Oscar Silembo said the requirement for coordinates should not be a source of worry for members of the public and the authority could assist those without the figures.