No country can register rapid development without improved water supply and sanitation and better management of water resources. The latter has the potentials to boost countries’ economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.
It is in the news that residents of Darussalam village in Sami District, Central River Region north (CRR/n) have been lamenting lack of portable drinking water in the community. The people drink water from a 55-metre deep local well using a pulley.
Everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use. What is even more scaring is the fact that this people have no option but to drink from this long well just to survive. Just imagine a well that is used for drinking and other domestic chores is also use to serve the animal population in the area.
And the saddest part is; their suffering gets worst during the dried season, when most of the wells in these rural communities get dried off. Let’s bear in mind that safe portable drinking water is vital for almost every function in the body. Water acts as a building block, a solvent for chemical reactions, and a transport material for nutrients and waste.
Sustainable Development Goal 6 calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water. This target is tracked with the indicator of “safely managed drinking water services” - drinking water from an improved water source that is located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination of any chemicals.
Government and other concerned stakeholders should immediately look into the plight of this CRR community and come with an urgent solution. Water is life and without it noting can function properly.
Therefore, providing the community with a borehole would significantly end their sufferings in accessing clean water. It will also help the women in the area, who spend countless hours in queue to draw water from this long well.
When water comes from improved and more accessible sources, people spend less time and effort physically collecting it, meaning they can be productive in other ways. This can also result in greater personal safety by reducing the need to make long or risky journeys to collect water.
We once again call on the government, concerned ministries and non-governmental organisations and even philanthropists to come to the aid of this CRR community.
"No water, no life. No blue, no green."
Sylvia Earle