On 12 August the government approved a national programme aimed at ensuring that, by 2030, almost the entire population of the country has access to safe water and far more people are connected to sewerage, according to the Executive’s communiqué. The figure that sums up the stakes: only two thirds of homes in Moldova are connected to a water system, and to sewerage — just one third. The communiqué names no district. The National Bureau of Statistics data, however, clearly shows where Ungheni stands on this map — and in the text of the programme itself the district is named several times.
What the government approved
The “National programme for the development of the water supply and sanitation sector for 2026–2030” sets out the priorities, the responsibilities of institutions and the financing mechanisms for modernising services. For now it is a draft decision approved in a government sitting: its exact number and date are assigned upon publication in the Official Gazette, and the decision enters into force one month afterwards. It replaces the strategy adopted in 2014, which also had a 2030 horizon, and places the sector under the new “European Moldova 2030” framework.
The total estimated cost of the measures is around 598 million lei — 597.65 million, to be precise — for the five years.
The target is expressed in percentages. “The objective is simple: reaching the targets of access to safe water sources for at least 95% of the population and to sewerage networks for at least 65%, so that good and safe services are provided for people,” said Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Bolea, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, quoted in the communiqué.
The programme relies on two directions. The first is the organisation of services: the authorities will encourage cooperation between localities and regionalisation, so that networks are managed by larger, more sustainable operators, rather than by each town or village hall on its own. The second concerns quality: in the field of sanitation, the programme provides for the treatment of wastewater in line with European standards — specifically, with the European directive on urban wastewater, renewed in 2024. Particular attention is promised to rural localities and schools. “Especially in schools there are situations where we have a great deal of work to do so that all children have access to dignified sanitation,” said Prime Minister Vasile Tofan.
Where the 598 million go — and where they don’t
Here it is easy to fall into a confusion worth clearing up from the outset: the nearly 598 million lei are not money for building pipes, plants and networks. The programme states explicitly that it does not include capital investments in infrastructure — these are to be planned separately, through another document (the “Water and sewerage” section of the National Territorial Planning Plan). What does it fund, then? The sector’s reform: the regulatory framework, strengthening the capacities of town halls and operators, staff training, water-safety plans, digitalisation — and, specifically, water and sanitation needs in schools.
The structure of the money reflects this logic. Of the 597.65 million, almost three quarters — 450.6 million, that is 75% — go towards the performance of local institutions and water-and-sewerage operators; the rest is split between the sector’s governance and its financial sustainability. As for sources, 57.3% (342.5 million) come from the state budget, 21.4% from external assistance, and about a fifth — 127.2 million, 21.3% — remain uncovered for now, to be found from external and European funds. “We will not be able to make these changes without access to European resources too,” said Prime Minister Tofan.
The programme treats water, sanitation and hygiene in schools separately — a field in which it flags large disparities — and aims to extend interventions to 125 schools by 2026, ten of which turned into “model schools”. The figure for Ungheni district — how many schools have the toilet only in the yard — is not published separately.
How Ungheni district stands
The communiqué speaks in national percentages. The National Bureau of Statistics data, in territorial profile, brings the picture down to district level — and shows Ungheni figure by figure.
At the end of 2025, the district had 816 kilometres of public water distribution network, but only 119 kilometres of sewerage. In other words, for every kilometre of pipe through which sewerage runs, there are almost seven kilometres of water pipe. By homes, the gap is just as clear: 29,181 homes were connected to the water supply and only 10,170 to sewerage — that is, about one third of the households with running water also have a drain to the network. Almost the same one-in-three ratio that the communiqué describes at country level.
The most concrete picture is the map by locality. According to the statistical data, 50 localities in the district have a public water network, but only 7 also have a sewerage network: the town of Ungheni, the town of Cornești and the villages of Chirileni, Cornova, Sinești, Todirești and Petrești. The rest — 43 localities with running water — have no sewerage network at all. And the existing sewerage is concentrated in the town: of the district’s 119 kilometres, 80 are in the town of Ungheni.
The system has not stood still. The district’s water network grew by more than 70% in a decade — from 473 kilometres in 2016 to 816 in 2025 — and the number of wastewater treatment plants rose from 3 to 7 over the same period. Sewerage, however, advanced more slowly: it stayed at 80 kilometres between 2016 and 2021, before climbing towards today’s level. All of this in a district whose population is falling — 73,971 residents with usual residence at the beginning of 2026, compared with 96,471 in 2014.
Why water is easier than sewerage
The gap between the two networks is not a peculiarity of Ungheni, but a technical reality of the whole country — and it is worth explaining, because what can be done in five years depends on it.
A drinking-water network can be extended relatively simply: a pipe buried along the road and a connection to each house. Sewerage requires much more. Wastewater has to be collected from every household, carried through sloping pipes to a low point and, above all, treated before being discharged — otherwise it ends up in the soil, in wells or in the river. That means not only pipes, but also pumping stations and treatment plants, far more expensive to build and to maintain. That is why, in scattered villages, sewerage remains almost everywhere the last link to be closed.
Ungheni, named in the text of the programme itself
Although the communiqué mentions no district, the text of the programme — a document of over eighty pages — names Ungheni several times. In the diagnostic chapter, the town appears on the list of the seven towns with a critical situation in wastewater treatment, alongside Chișinău, Bălți, Soroca, Comrat, Edineț and Cahul. The reason, in the document’s own words: Ungheni’s treatment plant dates from 1974 and “operates only at the mechanical stage” — that is, it retains suspended matter but does not carry out the biological treatment that environmental standards require. The degree of wear, the programme writes, calls either for full rehabilitation or for a new plant.
A clarification is needed here, because the two are easily confused: Ungheni has two different plants. One treats the drinking water drawn from the Prut, at Zagarancea (the intake dates from 1972) — and it is being worked on right now, through a regional project of about 32 million lei, with state money via ADR Centre. The other, the wastewater treatment plant from 1974, is the one flagged in the national programme as a backlog; last year, the town hall called on the environmental researchers of the USM to find a solution for the wastewater discharged into the Prut. In other words, the money coming into the town today is for the water that arrives at the tap; cleaning the water that leaves remains the next step.
The local operator, moreover, had a say in the drafting of the document itself. In the summary of the consultations, the director of Apă-Canal Ungheni, Ion Filimon, noted that the town’s treatment plant was built “in the year ‘70” and the wastewater plant “in the year ‘74”, and that investments in monitoring systems and staff training are equally important — an observation marked in the document as accepted.
Not least, Ungheni is named among the six towns around which regional water operators have already formed, with the support of the World Bank, the European Union, the German agency GIZ and the EBRD — exactly the model of “regionalisation” that the new programme wants to make general.
Regionalisation: the programme’s bet for the 43 localities
For the villages with running water and no sewerage, the programme’s key word is “regionalisation”. The idea: instead of each town or village hall managing a small, expensive network on its own, services would be taken over by larger operators, at district or zone scale, which can maintain a treatment plant and attract financing. Today, 44 licensed operators are in operation across the country, and the reform wants to merge them into four or five regional entities. The stakes are visible in the bill too: in Ungheni, a cubic metre of water and sewerage costs about 40 lei — more than where the operator is large, because a small network is more expensive to maintain per consumer. Reducing precisely these territorial differences is one of the arguments for regionalisation.
Ungheni does not start from scratch. Back in 2022, the town hall set up a working group to initiate the regionalisation of the water and sewerage service — precisely the direction the national programme now calls for; the stage this group has reached in the meantime is not public. In practice, however, the district is still fragmented: apart from the municipal operator Apă-Canal Ungheni — a company whose sole shareholder is Ungheni Municipal Council and which serves over 40,000 consumers — the villages have their own small enterprises, from Petrești to Sculeni. The backbone that could link these networks — the trunk water main from Zagarancea, from the Prut source, towards Cornești — is being designed right now, contracted by the District Council.
What is already being built in the district
Even though the new programme brings no money for pipes, work is already under way on several networks in the district, with financing from the state and from national programmes. In the town of Ungheni the water networks are being modernised, under the same regional project of about 32 million lei; the town’s pipes are half a century old and burst often, which is why replacing them has become a priority. In the district’s villages, through the “European Village” programme, new water mains are being built — at Elizavetovca (Zagarancea commune), at Morenii Noi and at Mînzătești (Hîrcești commune). At Boghenii Vechi, the commune brought its water from the Prut up to four hillside villages, and Cornești ran water and sewerage pipes under the national road, by directional drilling.
Almost all of these works are for the supply and distribution of drinking water. Sewerage and treatment — the hard and expensive part — appear far more rarely, which confirms, on the ground, exactly the gap that the statistics show.
A framework programme, not a budget by district
The programme approved on 12 August sets the direction — European targets, regionalisation, treatment compliant with EU standards — and puts money into the sector’s reform. What it does not do is pour concrete: investments in pipes and plants are planned separately, and a breakdown by district or locality does not exist in the document. For the 43 Ungheni localities with running water and no sewerage, this means that real change depends on the step that follows — the concrete infrastructure projects and their coming under an operator large enough to maintain them. For now, the district’s oldest backlog remains the wastewater treatment plant from 1974, named by the government itself among the country’s seven critical cases.