Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres will be de­vel­oped in a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone in Debe, with short, medi­um and long-term plans in place to meet their wa­ter needs.

Padarath is seek­ing to al­lay con­cerns over the po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal and in­fra­struc­ture im­pact of the projects, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment has been plan­ning the de­vel­op­ments across sev­er­al min­istries and that wa­ter sup­ply to res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial cus­tomers will not be af­fect­ed.

“The lo­ca­tion of the da­ta cen­tres are meant to be in a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone. We are look­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly at Debe for these da­ta cen­tres in that eco­nom­ic zone,” Padarath said.