Citizens in Kapoeta South County of Eastern Equatoria State are currently suffering from a severe drinking water shortage after borehole pumps broke down since last month.
Mary Nakinga, a resident of Kapoeta town, told Radio Tamazuj on Friday that they have spent nearly a week without clean drinking.
“It is now a week we don’t have drinking water and we are thirsty. Sometimes we search for people who sell water using bicycles, so we buy from them at a high price of SSP200. Where can we get this money? There is nowhere we can get water from,” she said.
She called on the authorities to intervene.
Mary’s call was also echoed by Susan Nakang, another resident of Kapoeta town.
She said: “We need the government to help us. We are now suffering from the issue of water. We are drinking dirty water from Singaita and people are sick, and sometimes you go to Singaita, there you will get these criminals who beat you or sometimes rape women.”
For his part, Kapoeta South County Commissioner Juma Justine said the county government is working to repair 20 boreholes in payams to address the acute water shortage in the county.
“We have some small support we are getting from VNG international. They are supporting the WASH department in capacity building,” he said.
“We are now working on repairing boreholes, we are repairing 20 boreholes in our payams and we are doing training to handpump mechanics, women handpump mechanics, and they are now in the field doing practical work so that we can give water services to our people here. We have divided five boreholes to each Payam,” he added.
When asked about the risk of waterborne diseases resulting from the consumption of unsafe water in Kapoeta town, the local official said: “There is a problem of the water pump at Hai Palakal, but we are searching for ways of handling the situation but we cannot say it is a bigger issue because we have repaired another handpump in Palakal and Kotome residential area plus Rei A, so there are two now.”