By Vincent Gunde
The Dowa District Council’s Water Development Office with support from Water for People, conducted validation on water points exercise in the areas of Traditional Authority Mkukula in the district to appreciate challenges people of the area are meeting in accessing good and quality water.
District Coordination Team members visited the sites where there are boreholes accompanied by Area Mechanics meeting village chiefs and communities to share experiences and knowledge on how water points are being utilized and proper maintenances.
Precious Mzungu, Environmental Health Officer (EHO) for Dowa District Hospital (DHO) has called for collaboration of all stakeholders to take part in the sustainability of boreholes in the district to make sure that communities are being served with quality water.
Mzungu said Health Surveillance Assistants (HSA’s), Village heads, and Area Mechanics are crucial in the sustainability of water points observing that lack of these people play an impact in the sustainability of the boreholes surrounding the communities.
He said during the visit, they inspected boreholes and found that there were gaps and beside those gaps, there was successful news that water points committees were available, the committees were able to collect money for maintenance purposes, and there was good coordination within members of the committees.
The officer said the visit identified challenges such as some boreholes were broken down because they needed big maintenance costs, poor sanitation because of poor coordination among water points committees, and space for boreholes because they did not finalize with the owners of the land from which the boreholes were sunk.
He said at one water point, they found that there was only one member of the committee, the rest of the members dropped on the reasons that they did not want to work on voluntary basis and in the other committee, it was an all -women affairs on the claims that men are very clever.
“Collaboration is important because any committee in the village is working on behalf of the Village head, he has to be updated on each and every activity happening and this include water points committees,” said Mzungu.
He has called on Health Surveillance Assistants (HSA’s) to inspect and to ensure that sanitation is maintained at all boreholes and to supervise water point committees on whether they are contributing money or issues of space for the sustainability of boreholes.
The officer also asked Water Points Mechanics to ensure that boreholes are being inspected and serviced for steady supply of water noting with a great concern that some boreholes in the communities are serving a good number of households hence frequent broken down.
He has appealed to partners in water sector to work together to provide additional boreholes to big communities served by one borehole saying this can serve the boreholes from frequent broken down and communities resorting to unclean and unsafe water from water sources not protected.
Mzungu has finally thanked Water Point Mechanics for their vigilant speaking for itself that they know their job saying they took them to each and every water point to appreciate the successes and challenges people in the district are meeting in accessing quality water.
