Acute water shortage within Juba town has left residents wondering where they can get clean water, despite the general impression given by the urban water corporation that there is a plentiful supply. But the reality is that many residents of Juba are trying to cope with a poor water supply, coupled with frequent delays, sometimes four days in a week. Some residents say that they continue having to pay as much as the 1000 Sudanese pounds a month despite the supply problems.Mr Mading Cienggan, a senior engineer for the urban water corporation blames the poor supply of water on low power to supply the city, use of old water filters and the increase of supply to new areas which were not included in the beginning.
Mr Mading said, “We are looking forward to improve and replace the old pipes and filters with new ones that will be done early January next year by JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) which has already started surveying throughout Juba.”
According to Mading those who cannot afford to pay will be considered but, the issue is the limited filters that need maintenance and also if the power goes off, generators have to be used, which are expensive to sustain in terms of fuel cost. “The reason for restricting citizens from getting water from the Nile directly is to reduce the risks of getting typhoid which have been on the increase last year as an effect of this unclean water”, Mading added.
Currently the water corporation uses pipes and filters, some of which trace their manufacturing date to 1945, and so remain unworthy and too weak to supply adequate volumes of water. Mading however appealed to residents to understand the state of affairs at the corporation, insisting that plans were underway to improve the situation.
Christina Kaku, a resident of Konyo-konyo, a local market, who hosts an old woman and five young children in her makeshift shack, located beside the graveyard, said that she too, like many other ordinary residents, cannot afford to pay for clean drinking water.
For Kaku, just like the majority of poor people living in her neighborhood, poverty continues to define who owns what and who drinks clean water. The situation has compelled her to literally source her water from the untreated River Nile, just to save her extra coin for something other than water.
“The government should at least drill more bore holes to allow the poor to access clean water to reduce the risk of being involved in diseases like diarrhoea which expose the poor to risks of contracting other diseases”, Kaku says.
Mr George Gadi is the secretary of Kator Payam Water Tape and just like the majority of Juba town residents wonders what the next move out of the water scarcity situation will be. “Without water how can we survive, since water is life? They should supply and supervise the water flow and consider our complaints of paying and getting insufficient water”, George said.
“Most of us depend on the water business to sustain our families. If there is no supply and we pay money every month, what shall we get or benefit”, he added. He insists that the commodity can only be made affordable to everyone if cost implications and people’s living standards are taken into consideration. “We pay 1000 Sudanese pounds each month but, we only recover 700 Sudanese pounds, which remains unaffordable to most families who have to survive on such kind of businesses”, stated George.
Mr Mohamed Mogga, a resident of Malakia, said that there is no equal supply of water in Juba because some areas get full and constant water supply. He says that the selective system of water distribution used by the corporation had drawn a major poverty line between the rich and the poor, and he called for fairness if any tangible development was to be realized for the common good of all. “The government restricts us from getting water directly from the Nile and if they still cannot supply, where are we going to get the water from, since some of us cannot afford to pay the price given?”, Mogga asks.
Mr Riman Morero, a resident of Kator, said that he had been selling water in Juba for the last four months but, faced a major threat of attack by marauding youths who targeted water vendors by grabbing their hard gotten money. Ramadan advises youths to play a leading role in community development by engaging in economically constructive and especially money generating activities.
