A €3.2 million Urban Water Network Improvement Project, fully funded by NAWEC itself, covering 59.5 kilometres of new pipes, valves and infrastructure, promising 24-hour supply. If delivered, this is not just a water project. It is dignity restored.
We commend NAWEC for this. Let’s get it that water is not a favour. It is a right. As NAWEC’s own head of Water and Sewerage, Omar Sanneh, rightly said, access to safe and reliable water is a fundamental human right. For too long, Bundung Ka Kunda has lived with that right denied. The Alkalo said it plainly: 40 years of low pressure. That is not a technical glitch. That is a generational failure that must end now.
Fully-funded by NAWEC , a welcome shift.
as rightly stated by deputy Managing Director Momodou L. Sompo Ceesay: this is not donor-driven. It is NAWEC-funded. At a time when Gambians are losing confidence in the utility due to blackouts and billing issues, this self-funded investment sends a strong message: NAWEC can invest in its people when it chooses to.
The real test is not the launch, but the tap. We have seen launches before. Ribbons cut, speeches made, pipes laid, then pressure drops again. The contractor, Syben A Madi and Sons, has promised “high quality work that will serve this community for a very long time.” Residents, as Councillor Lamin Darboe, women leader Amie Jatta, and NAM Sulayman Jammeh urged, must take ownership. But ownership also means accountability.
It is a well known fact that for decades, women in Bundung and Tallinding have carried buckets especially during odd hours when water pressure get better. Children have missed school to fetch water. This project says: that era should be over.
NAWEC has taken a bold step. Now it must finish what it started. Because the true measure of this €3.2 million will not be in the press release, but in whether a mother in BundungKa Kunda or Tallinding can turn on her tap at 2pm, and water flows.
That is the only test that matters.