RESIDENTS of Sagnarigu-Dungu, a peri-urban community in the Tamale metropolism say they can no longer bear the negative impact of lack of potable water and sanitation facilities in the area.
The non-availability of the two facilities, according to the residents, is creating serious marital problems, health and economic challenges in the community.
A spokesperson for the area, Mr Dahaman Nayi, told the Daily Graphic for instance, that due to the fact that women walk long distances in the night in search of water at a nearby dam, some of their husbands had been suspecting them of infidelity and engaging in prostitution.
He explained that the situation most often resulted in petty squabbles among married couples and indicated that most men were not comfortable with the situation no matter the explanation the women gave to their respective husbands.
At a forum dubbed “Poverty Hearing”, organised by WaterAid and New Energy, both non-governmental organisations under the End Water Poverty Campaign, Mr Nayi together with some residents, who attended the function, complained about a myriad of problems in the community.
The area has a population of about 2,114 with farming and trading as the predominant occupation of the people.
The women mostly engage in sheabutter production and trading, while the men cultivate rice.
“Every day we quarrel with our wives when they return from fetching water; in fact there is no trust among married couples and this is happening because our wives go for water in the night and they do not come back in time to sleep.”Mr Nayi pointed out.
According to some residents, some of the women because they carry big and heavy basins filled with water on their heads daily, are allegedly contracting a strange disease that seem to be similar to mental illness.
“Our women are usually bitten by snakes when they go to fetch water and this untreated water is affecting the health of our community members” they stressed.
A pregnant woman narrated her harrowing experience, claiming that she walked at least four kilometers everyday to fetch water and had to defecate anywhere she deemed fit because there was no toilet facility in the area.
Some old women in the community also complained of joining the younger women to look for water although they claimed they were too old for that.
“The issue is that, we want pipe borne water since it has been difficult for us to get boreholes that are high-yielding”Mr Nayi further emphasised.
The overall objective of poverty eradication is to empower the communities to advocate improvement in their socio-economic lives.
According to the Ghana Statistical Service Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) report for 2006,open defecation is prevalent in all the ten regions. The report further indicated that while the national average is 24 per cent, the practice is most widespread in the Upper East Region with about 82 per cent of the people without any form of latrine, followed by the Upper West Region with about 79 per cent and the Northern Region 73 per cent.
Although Tamale is a metropolis, it is still vulnerable in terms of adequate potable water supply, particularly to some of the peri-urban communities. During the dry season, most of the water bodies dry up while the already poor underground water level falls, making boreholes and wells to dry up.
The Communications and Campaigns Officer, Madam Janet Dabire, observed that the complaints from residents of the area were “advocacy tools for us which we will use for high level meeting, like the Millennium Development Goal plus 10 Summit in New York this month”.
She said that her outfit and New Energy intended to provide a pipe water system to the community in the near future but stressed that the government and the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly should put the necessary structures in place to facilitate the provision of potable water and sanitation facilities in the community.
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