This dire situation has impacted severely on residents, especially women and children, of the community.
Speaking to The Point newspaper, the community’s Alkalo Mamut Faal said that for over 8 months, residents could have access to water only an hour each day. “And recently for a consecutive period of 18 days there was no access to water at all,” Alkalo Faal laments.”Water is a basic necessity which no one can go without, and having to struggle to get it while paying bills is a serious concern to us as a community.”
He says further: “Cleanliness is part of Godliness, and the daily prayers and other religious rites of Islam cannot go without water, which has become an issue for over 7 to 8 months now that our taps are dry. We can only manage to fetch water from boreholes to bath and launder but unfit to drink.”
Explaining her frustrations over the situation, Bintou Kinteh, a mother, said they have been struggling for quite a long time trying to get pure tap water for drinking and other health-related purposes. Having to be waking up early in the morning with her children to fetch water for the day is hard for her as a mother, she stressed.
“My children and I are always up as early as 5 or 6 a.m. everyday to fetch water for schooling, cooking laundering and bathing before I go to the market to sell while they prepare for school,” Kinteh complains.
Another resident Asmawo Jallow says to be paying water bills and at the same time buying pure water from the shop to drink is too costly to bear. They are forced to be sitting without going to bed until 12 midnight waiting to fetch water, she complained.
“It's been almost a month, everyday I wait for water but it never comes,” she explained her ordeal. “I will have to fetch water from the borehole. No water from the tap to do my chores and to drink. We buy water from the shops to drink, which is not helpful financially and sometimes we have to drink the borehole water if we don't have money.”
In the same vein, Musa Baldeh, also a resident, stated that their community had gone for up to three weeks without a drop of water from the taps. This has posed significant challenges to their children, he lamented: “The situation we are in today is causing so much harm to us, because some of our children suffer from diarrhoea when they drink the water from the boreholes, and we cannot meet the huge medication and hospital bill.”
Baldeh said they have on several occasions informed NAWEC about this dire situation, to ameliorate the water crisis they are encountering but have seen no change or improvement of the situation.
“We have even sent delegates to our councillor and the National Assembly Member to help us get to NAWEC but haven’t got any response from them to date,” he added.
Responding to these claims taken to them by this reporter, the NAM and NAWEC authorities however denied ever receiving such complaints. They nonetheless promised to locate the community to find solution to the problem.
