South Sudanese refugees who are encamped in Rhino camp in northern Uganda have complained about shortages of drinking water at the camp.
Speaking to Radio Tamazuj, several refugees who fled due to insecurity in South Sudan complained about shortcomings by organisations working on the provision of water at the camp.
Betty Yeno, a mother of six children, said that they sometimes spend more than three days without water in the area. She pointed out that they often go for long distances in order to get drinking water.
Betty called on humanitarian partners in both South Sudan and Uganda to drill more boreholes at the camp. “At the moment, we are in the dry season, so access to water is very hard, there are no boreholes here. We fetch water from long a distance, which is really a big challenge, we need boreholes here at the camp,” she added.
Meanwhile, Rose Medina, another refugee said that they face difficulties getting drinking water at the camp. “It is not easy to get water here, some of the tankers bring water here but is not enough, many of us always go back home without fetching water,” she said.
“It brings challenges especially for our children, because they don’t sleep. They go to areas which are far away to look for water which is dangerous to the future of our girls,” she added.
Bidal Sebit, a refugee at the camp, said that the host community doesn’t allow South Sudanese to fetch water from their water sources. “I just need to give you a typical example, some few months ago, at least more than five of our brothers and sisters fetched poisoned water, and all of them perished,” he said.
“So my humble call is to the humanitarian partners both in Uganda and South Sudan to look into such challenges” he added.
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