By: Ben TC Brooks
River Gee County – Dec. 23, 2024 – Healthcare is more than access to medicine and medical personnel. Clean and safe drinking water, good hygiene practices coupled with better sanitation play integral role in promoting and sustaining people’s overall health.
To improve safe water availability in Kelipo Kanweaken, northern River Gee, a county with limited available water and sanitation services, citizens of the town continue to maintain their hand pumps drilled in 1988 during the Administration of the late President Samuel K. Doe.
According to UNICEF report, 42% of Liberians lack access to safe drinking water, with the situation being even worst in rural areas. Approximately 1.3 million people do not have clean water near their homes, accounting for nearly a quarter of the population as of Dec 10, 2024 reported.
“We get water for washing, cooking and bathing from hand dug-wells in our zones of the town while for drinking only; we get water from the two functional hand pumps constructed during the late President Samuel Kayan Doe administration. “We know the water from the dug-wells is dirty, sometimes brown, but we don’t have any other option but to use it to save our two hand pumps because of increase in our population in the town,” says Ma. Victoria Tugbah, a resident of Kilepo Kanweaken.
Youth consultant of Kilepo Kanweaken Mr. Bobby Jalawah has therefore outlined schedules water is fetch from the hand-pumps by users. He mentioned that the pump open from 6:30Am-10:30am and reopen 5:30pm- 7:30pm daily.
“After the 2003 ‘MODEL’ war, as community dwellers, we sent two of our children to Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County to learn about the hand-pumps minor repair. They learned, came back and taught others and it is continuously being rollout up to today. This is how the hand-pumps are being maintained and repaired whenever there is a need,” Mr. Jalawah lamented.
He said it is mandatory that each household of Kilepo Kanweaken paid LD$100.00 monthly as a way of sustainability.
Sarah Dorbor, aged 23, said it is their responsibility as young girls of the town to always clean around the two hand-pumps from grass and dirt.
“We do the cleaning up by schedules from zones or quarters of the town and it has been supported by the town Development Officer, Chiefs and Elders. Therefore, it is by law that anyone who fails to do work around the hand-pumps, said individual can be handled by the Town Elders and Development Officer,” Ms. Dorbor said.
“For some of us, we met the drilled hand-pumps on earth with our parents and we too must maintain it until we can leave it with our children. Our creeks and rivers are very far away and now all polluted due to mining activities so we must keep it safe by all necessary means,” she added.
Kilepo Kanweaken located in the northern part of the county, is about 65km away from the County’s Capital Fish-Town, boarders, Grand Gedeh and Sinoe Counties with over with 2000 inhabitants according Statistics of the National Housing and Population Census of 2022 respectively.
Meanwhile, having access to clean water is challenging in rural Liberia, especially River Gee, where most people rely on hand dug-wells and surface water.
Edited: Jesefu Morris Keita
