COLOMBO — Sri Lanka and China on Oct 14 signed a supplementary agreement on a Memorandum of Understanding on water research and technology cooperation, aimed at providing clean drinking water to several areas of the island country, a statement from the Chinese Embassy to Sri Lanka said.

The statement said the signing of the supplementary agreement was a follow-up of the important consensus reached recently by the two countries.

It said the original MoU between Sri Lanka and China was inked in March 2015 to tackle the chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) and provide clean drinking water for CKDu prevalence areas in Sri Lanka.

Under the MoU, a state-of-the-art Joint Research and Demonstration Center for Water Technology (JRDC) was established recently in the campus of the University of Peradeniya, in the central highlands of Kandy while in the coming five years, the Chinese Academy of Sciences will keep funding the cooperation of the JRDC.

Furthermore, three groundwater purification demonstration projects and more than 20 rainwater harvesting devices have been built in the CKDu affected areas in Sri Lanka to provide high-quality drinking water to more than 4,000 villagers and 1,300 primary school students, the statement said.

"Besides, during the past five years, 66 water and medical professionals took part in training programs by the CAS, and currently 53 Sri Lankan graduate students (including 19 PhD students) are studying in the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS)," it added.