Citizens Exposed To Water Borne Diseases Yoagaria Town
PHOTO: The town chief is fetching water at the creek for drinking. They also used it for bathing, washing clothes, cooking and others…
By King Brown, Sarwahking@gmail.com
GRAND BASSA, Liberia– The lack of safe drinking water is one of the issues of serious concern to the people of the southern Grand Bassa Conty in electoral district #2, particularly Yoagaria Town.
As a result, residents in this town have raised alarm over this issue in addition to the lack of schools, health facilities and other basic necessities.
Town Chief Trokon Horace has said the lack of safe drinking water continues to become dangerous for many people of his town. He said the situation has led to many people including children contracting waterborne diseases as a result of drinking unsafe water.
Because of the situation, they are constrained to drink from such a contaminated creek which is their only alternative, adding that the lack of access to safe drinking water is really affecting their livelihood, Chief Horace said.
He alleged that a major contributing factor to their health problems in the district is the lack of safe and clean drinking water, noting they are drinking it just to survive.
According to him, they do not have explicit confidence in fetching water from the creek due to the lack of a functional hand pump.
He noted that there are over 50 residents of this town that do not have access to basic drinking water services.
Locals here are surviving by tapping and selling palm wine and burning charcoal.
Chief Horace also explained that the little money they get from their sales always go towards the medical treatment of their children. He said pregnant women, babies and children are the ones mostly affected by diarrhea.
“The creek where we presently get water from for drinking is not safe and is causing us to have running stomach and other water borne diseases,” he said.
This hand pump was the only means we had to get safe water, but it’s damaged and needs repair, Horace told our reporter…
He also explained that a Non-Government Organization constructed this hand pump as a means of helping to bring clean and safe water to them but the hand pump got damaged about five month ago.
Although, he did not mention the name of the NGO.
He said since then, they are mostly in dying need of safe drinking water.
Town Chief Horace added: “Certain NGO people came here and built this hand pump for us, but it did not stay long and it got damaged, since then, nobody has come to help us repair it We have been yearning for help to have a hand pump to prevent us and our children and pregnant women from catching running stomach and the people came and built this hand pump for us.”
However, access to safe drinking water for Liberians remains a major challenge especially in the rural areas, least to talk about the dry season. This has fueled the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera.
Meanwhile, Yoagaria Town Chief Horace is appealing to good will-individuals to come to their aid on behalf of the citizens.