By Yusuf Mouguah
Fresh promises emerged as if we were just still at the cradle of last March 2018 presidential campaigns, rather a commemoration of the first anniversary marking the celebration of massive failures and unfulfilled promises made by President Julius Maada Bio while seeking the Office of President.
You may not like that but they speak to the fact Dr. Jonathan Tengbeh of the Ministry of Water Resources has failed is the basic truth that should be told in the face of President Bio.
The taps are not running and the sanitation is getting poorer every day, said Simity Lamina of Ivan Drive, Upper Allen Town and almost the same water shortage everywhere.
She explained constraints faced by residents in fetching water for domestic purposes not for drinking, adding that they source pure water from private manufacturing companies.
President Bio pledged to alleviate these sufferings barely a year and half ago if voted, but he is seemingly ignoring water and sanitation issues and the hopes and expectations of many who really believe that the President need them no more because he has got what he wanted.
President Bio has indeed turned his back away from the people who voted him to power, negating against his promises to them, especially on safe drinking water and health among basic social services to homes and communities across the country.
People hardly access water and sanitation facilities in most communities in Freetown, Western Rural District and in some provincial communities.
Some feel extremely deceived by the new government and President Bio for not translating his promises into actions.
In a system where in service delivery is respected, social contract between the state and the people, nobody makes jokes about water, not in Sierra Leone where the people are left with no option but to take risks for everything they do.
Not only for water shortage as Sierra Leoneans would get tired of taking risks one year after the election of a new government things remain pretty much the same caused by drought of water scarcity everywhere.
Even stand pipes couldn’t stand the test, and bore holes, locally dug wells fixed with electric machines pump water to plastic Millar Tanks that are rapidly occupying Freetown’s skyline in furtherance to supplying water into private households nationwide.
This tells how inefficient water services provision agencies starting with the Ministry of Water Resources, Sierra Leone Water Company (SALWACO), Guma Valley Water Company and others have failed the nation in the provision of such a very essential public utility.
They have all lost their past glories to the incumbent’s predecessors through indiscriminate sackings.
The governing Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) MPs religiously listened to each and every ‘is’ and ‘to’ of President Bio’s State Opening Parliament speech to the nation on May 2nd 2019, in which he reviewed recent reforms in the water resources sector.
We received the President’s address to the nation as a hopeful call to offer the nation safe water to drink once more, but that is yet to come to pass, as people in remote communities in Freetown and other cities still don’t have access to water and sanitation facilities.
Why our government should not downplay the scarcity of water in the country is clearly spelled out in Pillar 6th of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) continues to urge world leaders including our own President Bio to ensure that water and sanitation capacity is available for all irrespective of class, race, tribe, religion and social political status, have right to water as part of their human rights.
It is in that direction we expect President Bio and the SLPP government to have championed the issue of water and sanitation in terms of policy formulation and implementation.
Rights to water is hardly acknowledged in Sierra Leone, even as the SDGs continue to advocate to governments to prioritize it, taps in Freetown and Bo are always dry, rights to water are not considered in this part of planet earth as a human right, hence people with little or no options, drink from untreated sources.
Limited access is always the case one normally hears about whenever you ask for means of accessing safe drinking water and for other domestic uses.
Shamelessly for government, the Deputy Minister of Water Resources, Nimatulai Bah-Chang, backs previous excuses of lack of funds to implement government projects which is why Guma Valley Water Company couldn’t in anyway fix the water problems in Freetown.
The problems are compounded by lack of adequate improvement of the falling water sector.
Addressing audience recently at the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Annual Review Conference jointly organized by the Ministry of Water Resources and in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation at the Bintumani Hotel, Aberdeen in Freetown, President Bio said Sierra Leoneans had died as a result of diarrhoea diseases, typhoid, dysentery, cholera and other water-borne diseases,” due to little or no access to safe water and sanitation facilities, though commitments can hardly be compared to the number of deaths .
Diarrhoea, according to health alerts, is on the rise and health authorities have strictly warned against spread of the outbreak.
Water and sanitation being very significant in this plight, received hopeful assurances from President Bio while in opposition promised to alleviate water problems if voted as President, is still not a thing of the past.
He now hardly pays attention to the health and general wellbeing of the masses he pretended to care for so much.
The people need water and they expect government through its various political representatives – MPs and councilors to deliver on their campaign promises.
Sierra Leone, one of Africa’s wettest countries with six months of rainfall, hardly harvests water even at the peak of the rains.
Water service providers in Sierra Leone including the Ministry of Water Resources have no water preservation plans, not even to harvest and keep for future purposes.
The scarcity’s pinch is felt across everywhere, onto Bo despite being a staunch beneficiary of SALWACO’s three town water project, now slowly continuing to Bonthe, Moyamba, Kailahum, Pujehun and other districts to handle water and sanitation problems there accordingly.
However, as blame apportioning and shifting unnecessary excuses one angle to the other have always been the normal tricks of SLPP politicians, President Bio during State Open of Parliament on 2nd May, 2019 reported problems affecting the development of the water resources sector, with damning acknowledgement to the last government for what is being described as its poor delivery in the water and sanitation sector.
For regular essential upgrade of the sector’s facilities, funds to the tune of approximately USD $ 600 million United States Dollars were recently allocated to government through the line ministries for immediate rehabilitations of water systems across the country.
This is why government’s failure to provide safe drinking water to the people of Sierra Leone appears to be deliberate and funny when the President is aware of the abuses of the rights of people being deprived of access to water.
Line ministries should ensure that they meet government’s part of the social deal with the people.
The task is always simple; deliver on your set and targeted goals with services and utilities to the people.
The much generation of huge revenues out of water rates is not reflected in dry stand pipes if ever all over the place.
I want to congratulate the deputy ministry of water resource for accepting government and her ministry’s failure in the water sector. What a shame on this administration.
Surprisingly, water and sanitation could not have come up in the President’s speech after a year in office making another promise to the suffering masses.
What about those you made during your campaigns Mr President?
Sincerely enough, very few people access water and sanitation facilities especially in remote communities of rural settings.
So from the President’s promises, we never expected anymore but news of improved water and sanitation options as expected, but service providers continue to recover water rates from every household in towns and municipalities across the country for dry taps.
Yet Guma and SALWACO you are unfairly providing no supplies to households which must be addressed with the utmost urgency.
Water to any serious government will always remains a key health priority to the entire administration, not just ministries, departments and agencies dealing in water service provisions rather than always procrastinating it as promises.
That is the main reason you have all the mushroom pure water companies with their unfiltered and contaminated water products; a senior nutritionist commented on her twitter page, blaming the Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone for blessing bad companies with licenses.
President Bio addressing issues in the water and sanitation sector should take the cue from his predecessor on a positive trajectory for the general provision of safe drinking water to other communities across the nation, using every source available apart from the three town water projects that were implemented by SALWACO during the last administration.
SALWACO is charged with the task of providing safe drinking water services to provincial towns including Bo, Kenema, Kalaba, Kambia Port Loko and Makeni, with support from the African Development Bank, other development partners to strongly capacitate provincial water supply systems.
For instance the Sierra Leone government World Bank River Rokel Freetown water supply and the three town water projects where SALWACO worked during the last government, taking water supplies to Makeni, Bo, Kenema, Lungi, Kabala and other towns in 2010, were done to supply safe drinking water to the provincial towns.
What is being done now by government in Pujehun, Kailahun, and Bonthe are not new and Sierra Leoneans have had enough of such stale ideas, all almost adopted from the past regime.
It is the same way that former President Ernest Bai Koroma adopted most of late President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah’s projects as any successive leader can do, so also we expect President Bio to adopt the unfinished projects inherited from the last administration, which is the unavoidable fact about continuity in democratic governance and sustainable development.
One successive government must be seen adopting projects left behind by an outgoing administration is what normally obtains in civilized democratic countries.
The Ministry of Water Resource and it agencies should ensure they provide access to water and sanitation to all irrespective of challenges of poor water resources management at both the Mile 13 and the Orugu dam at Allen Town and causing the problems of water shortage.
My appeal to government and President Bio as always is that if he is willing and ready to make it easy for the people, then let it be inclusive; getting others fully involved will make things work collectively and better for all.
Governance is concerned with 21st century development trends and not retrogression, so moving forward wherever one arm stopped another should take the cue right from where the last paused.
Therefore along the line of constructive and sustainable reforms of the water and sanitation sector is to firstly afforest the entire Mile 13 dam area with tree planting programmes, not just to SLPP members and supporters in Kenema eastern region, but to increase the capacity of Guma from that 83 million liters daily to a higher rate, scale up budgetary allocations to projects implementations and to a very large extent protect the dam area from the encroachments of land grabbers and forest harvesters to help mitigate water scarcity in Freetown by quenching the thirst of the nation as a whole.