Terrain denying communities access to safe water—Wesm
The Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi (Wesm) has said terrain in some parts of the country is retarding efforts to provide safe water to communities which are located far from main roads.
Speaking in an interview last week, Wesm Dwangwa branch manager Ockens Chipeta said the organisation has been forced to re-allocate boreholes for some targeted communities with inaccessible roads to other communities, thereby limiting the chances of the initially targeted communities to get safe water.
“We have a case of Lupachi in Traditional Authority Kafuzila in Nkhotakota where we recently gave 10 boreholes after people in the area had unsuccessfully requested boreholes from government. We only drilled five boreholes because we could not reach some of the targeted villages which are blocked by terrain.
“The borehole drilling machine could not reach the other villages. As a result, we donated the other five boreholes to another community,” said Chipeta.
He said while Lupachi area is located about 80 kilometres away from the main M5 Road, people in the area mobilised themselves and wrote a proposal requesting the boreholes only to be denied the allocated boreholes by the terrain.
Wesm Dwangwa water, sanitation and hygiene coordinator Samuel Mhone also said people from this area walked about 80 kilometres to ask for the boreholes.
“The main driving force was lack of safe water in the area as people have been drinking water from rivers and basic shallow wells together with domestic animals and dogs,” said Mhone.
