The House of Councilors adopted, on Tuesday, by a majority the bill n ° 83.21 relating to regional multi-service companies, by 38 votes in favor and five against 5. The text aims to support advanced regionalization through the creation, the initiative of the State, of companies at the level of each region to allow a convergence of the intervention of the various parties concerned in the field of distribution.
It is also a matter of making these companies available to local authorities, as a modern way of managing the distribution service that is part of their remit.
Presenting this bill to the Chamber, the Minister of the Interior, Abdelouafi Laftit, affirmed that thanks to the monitoring and evaluation of the water and electricity distribution sector, several issues preventing the actors to support the changing demand for water, sanitation and electricity services have been identified.
These problems also hinder the establishment of a balance in the distribution of these services at the territorial level, particularly in rural areas, added the Minister.
Mr. Laftit also stressed that the studies carried out on the sector revealed that it requires significant public investment, before noting that the approaches adopted to date have prevented an effective response to the needs of the sector given the lack of coordination and convergence and the overlapping of stakeholders, which explains the unjustified investments with limited effectiveness.
The Minister also maintained that climate change has exacerbated these problems, hence the urgency of the intervention of the players concerned and of the coordination between them to face the environmental challenges and succeed in the challenge of sustainable development, which today requires we are now setting up a system capable of guaranteeing a supply of drinking water and electricity, based on water saving, energy efficiency and the protection of the environment and natural resources.
These various considerations, he said, require the establishment of a legislative framework in harmony with the Moroccan legal arsenal relating to decentralization, public investment, the management of public services and the energy efficiency, with a view to establishing a new management system and making it available to communities and users.
This new system, which is based on multi-service companies, will allow the rationalization of investments made in the sector and the reduction of territorial disparities in the distribution of related public services, the Minister continued. In accordance with this approach, the Ministry of the Interior has thus drawn up, in consultation with the ministerial departments and public institutions concerned, in addition to the various social actors, this bill relating to regional multi-service companies, explained Mr. Laftit.