Seven villages face water shortage

Currently, these communities share a borehole with pupils and teachers of Aluga Primary School.

While speaking to Daily Monitor last Friday, the residents of Akokoro Parish said the water scarcity is exposing them to high risk of contracting water borne diseases.

Three boreholes serve the seven-affected villages but two broke down in February. The two boreholes are in Tooro and Aringo-yat villages.

The residents have refused to contribute money towards their maintenance over alleged corruption by the water user committee.

Ms Sandra Adongo, a resident of Aluga Central Village, said women are trekking long distances in search of water.

 “This is making many households unproductive because women are always looking for water,” she said.
Ms Martha Akena, a resident of Arak Village, said she travels three kilometres daily to fetch water from the neighbouring village.

“People trek long distances to collect water for domestic use and to water our animals. For us who have babies, you leave home at 6am to go and fetch water yet there are other domestic chores waiting for you and in the end, our babies suffer a lot,” she said.

Another resident, Ms Stella Luwari, said during the dry season, the water level goes down and people crowd the water sources up to late in the night.

“A woman was beaten up by her husband when she came to fetch water and she delayed at the water point. Her husband followed her and beat her badly,” she said.

Mr Emmanuel Ongom, the Apac District water officer, attributed the problem to low ground water potential.

“We tried about three times to drill a borehole at Aluga Primary School but failed. We had to move about 600 metres away from the school and that is where we have the borehole for the school,” he said in an interview on Monday.

Mr Ongom, however, said the district water department is looking at motorising the high-yielding boreholes and distributing them to the surrounding communities.

“We are in talks with the development partners to invest in mini-piped water schemes rather than sinking boreholes to help people in places where there are difficulties in sinking boreholes,” he added.

STATISTICS
Access to water
According to the Ministry of Water and Environment, Apac water coverage stands at 73 per cent.

The district has 653 domestic water points which serve a total of 161,609 people in rural areas.
At least 153 water points have been non-functional for more than 5 years and are considered abandoned.

As of June 2020, the national safe water coverage in rural areas was estimated at 68 per cent, a decline from 69 per cent as of June 2019.
This was attributed to low reporting of new water sources by districts, according to the Ministry of Water and Environment.

Billions of people around the world are continuing to suffer from poor access to water, according to a new report by Unicef and WHO.

[email protected]