Residents of Sikabiisi in the Sambologo Sikabiisi electoral area of Bongo in the Upper East Region has been sharing a hand-made dug well with animals for the past 40 years.
When word news visited the community, Residents were on long queues struggling to fetch unsafe water.
A resident, Mrs. Janet Akabare Nma said “it’s is very difficult accessing safe water in this community, it’s time for cooking, but there is no water for us to cook and if you don’t get water you can’t do anything. We use this same water to cook, bath, wash ,drink and if you bath this water, you always look dusty like you’ve bath clay.
If you want clean water, you’ve to walk to Kansoe or Natanga and the distance you have stop three times to rest”. she lamented.
Akolpoka Anyogbire, noted that since she got married in the community, they have been suffering to get portable drinking water in the community, “I got married to this community over 20 years now and we have been battling with the water crisis for many years now, there are times this dug-out well will dry up and the only option left for us is to wake up between 12am and 4am to search for water.
There are times our children will only wash their faces alone and go to school because there is no water for them to bath.we usually get infections like bilharzia and skin rashes, this dug-out well will soon dry up by march to April and we will have to travel from community to community in search of water”.
Mr Joseph Akolgo Ania, the Assembly member of the electoral area who is also a nurse lamenting to word news that the situation is unbearable saying that as a health worker, he can’t advise anybody to drink this unsafe water but it is beyond his control.
He has wishes in drilling a borehole to save his people, he however described his electoral area as one of the most deprived area in the Bongo District .
Children Laments:
Most children living in the Sikabisi looks very dusty as if the are doing mining.
Nyaaba Godwin, a Junior High School student in an interview with mywordfmonline.com disclosed that most of the times, they don’t bath and have to only apply pomade to look good but their colleagues do laugh and hoot at them for not bathing before applying pomade.
They therefore appealed to the government , Non- Governmental Organisations, Civil Society Organisation as well as philanthropists to rescue the situation.
Source: mywordfmonline.com / Gaspard Ayuureneeya.