This year’s World Water Day was dedicated to the urgent resolution of the crisis related to water and its sanitation. With the aim of solving this problem, Serbia is implementing the “Clean Serbia” project.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), two billion people, or every fourth inhabitant of the planet, do not have access to safe drinking water. Almost half of the world’s population, about 3.6 billion people, do not have proper sanitation, while 44 percent of household wastewater is not safely treated.

1.4 million people die annually from diseases related to poor water, sanitation and hygiene, while 74 million people are shortened their life expectancy.

Serbia is in 47th place in terms of the amount of water surfaces. Unfortunately, numerous pollutants threaten our rivers and lakes. The preservation of drinking water, which will be the main resource in the years ahead, and the prevention of river pollution, which has now reached a critical level, and therefore of the coastal zone and the living world in it, is one of the effects of the “Clean Serbia” project.

The number of inhabitants covered by this program is about two and a half million in 69 local self-government units. The construction of over 5,206,679.31 m of sewage network is planned, and the number of facilities is almost half of the number required for the whole of Serbia (165 WWTPs).