Women and girls from group village head(GVH) Piliwiza in Traditional Authority (T/A) Ganya in Ntcheu District will no longer spend a lot of time fetching safe water following the construction of 13 boreholes in the area.
With a grant from governments of Japan and Ireland, Concern Universal has constructed the boreholes worth about K42.5 million to benefit almost 23 000 people from 10 villages.
T/A Ganya is one of the communities where people, mostly women and girls, walk as far as five kilometres to the nearest protected water source.
Speaking on Friday during the handover ceremony in Piliwiza Village, Japanese Ambassador Shuichiro Nishioka said limited access to safe and potable water negatively affects the socio-economic development of a nation.
He said: “Despite efforts by the Malawi Government to ensure that people access safe and clean water, some people still find it difficult to access the same.”
Irish Ambassador Aine Hearns, whose government provided training and capacity building on maintenance of the boreholes and water sanitation, said many people in the country still need safe and clean water.
Principal secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development, Erica Maganga, thanked the two governments for drilling the boreholes, saying these will ease several water challenges the communities were facing.
Access to clean and safe water remains one of the challenges in the country.
