The capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown and other major towns and cities in Sierra Leone, are constrained with the acute problem of water for drinking and other domestic uses.
Governments in and out have battled with the problem with no end in sight to it.
The international community and many other organizations working in the sector, such as the NGO community, have spent lots of resources in trying to solve the problem.
The NGO community have largely failed to address the problem because they have approached it on a piece mill by digging hand dug pumps and wells in selected communities where the problem is acute.
The World Bank and other international and bilateral organizations are also on record to have spent huge resources and also provided technical support where necessary to boost the sector.
The country, through a number of legislations, has created a number of agencies to handle the water situation in the city and provincial towns.
The Guma Valley Water Company is charged to provide water to the homes of residents in the capital city of Freetown, while the Sierra Leone Water Company is responsible for providing water to different towns and cities in the country.
The two institutions: Guma Valley and SALWACO are further backed up by regulatory agencies and entities; Sierra Leone Water and Electricity Regulatory Agency and others with a view to ensure that the sector is well regulated.
This is precipitated against the backdrop that after the war a number of Water Companies and Independent Power Providers (IPP’s) have cropped-up from the private sector and Small Medium Term Enterprises to address the acute water problem facing Sierra Leoneans.
Governments in the past have also made political commitments to solving the water situation as an integral component of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Government has also created a whole Ministry of Water Resources to effectively deal with the issue of providing adequate drinking water for its people.
With all of these efforts, the water situation in the country gets worse on a daily basis.
It has been directly linked as the underlining cause for the increased sexual gender based violence and rape that has plummeted in the country.
Several girls of school going age have become victims of child abuse and rape as a result of them staying out late at night to fetch water.
The situation is very much alarming in the east of the capital, Freetown and other remote areas in the provinces.
In Freetown, residents have to cut water pipes to get water for domestic purposes.
They would spend the whole night fetching water and these has left school going children as preys to boys of their age and elderly men resulting into several abuses.
NGOs working in the WASH sector are also increasingly concerned that the lack of WASH facilities in schools and hospitals, is a major threat to the emergence of communicable and other water borne diseases in the country.
Most, if not all the schools in big towns and remote areas of the country, do not have access to WASH facilities and hence children are left with no option but to use papers when they go to the toilet.
Just after the Ebola, NGOs working in the WASH sector such as OXFAM and others have increasingly supported schools with water tanks to aid hygiene.
The problem is still worse as most schools and hospitals in the country are still without WASH facilities.
This brings me to the topic of harvesting rain water and the need for government and other interested parties working in the WASH sector and the Water Resources Ministry to encourage the harvest of rain water as a means to temporarily solve the acute or perennial water situation in the country.
The idea of harvesting rain water has enormously helped in solving the water crisis in some countries and organizations even in the country.
The United States Embassy for example relies on harvesting water during the rains and the system has worked very much for them in the last few years.
Government and other entities working in the sector, should entreat schools, hospitals and homes in the country to employ the method of harvesting and storing rain water during the rainy season.
Such water would be used in the dry season when the rains would have subsided.
Sierra Leone is known for recording very high levels of rain especially in forested areas in the east.
The Ministry of Water Resources should sensitize communities to harvest and store such waters.
How is it that Sierra Leone which has a very high record of rain throughout the wet season could have its schools and hospitals go without water for the rest of the dry season?
Government through the Ministry of Health and Education should start by ensuring that school buildings and health facilities are built to accommodate avenues to be able to harvest and store sufficient water for use by these entities for at least for the rest of the dry season.
The issue of rolling it out to homes will later follow after the successful roll out to schools and health facilities.
This method will greatly help or cushion the acute water problem that sometimes faces the country.
We can only prepare for such challenges in the dries during the wet season.
NGOs interested or working in the WASH and water sectors should increasingly divert their resources to supporting communities, schools and health facilities towards this direction.
This move is extremely necessary against the backdrop that deforestation is increasingly leaving water catchment areas vulnerable to be able to supply water to Sierra Leoneans.