A site for ongoing Sh10.2 billion water project initiated by Geita Gold
Mine in Geita in 2005. Over 12,000 people in Geita will benefit from the
project upon its completion. PHOTO | FILE
By Jackline Masinde,The Citizen Correspondent
In Summary
Geita. In Geita, water
availability is a matter of life and death. The region, according to
national statistics, has the least of its population accessing clean tap
water, at an awful three-per cent.
Some eight-per cent of wananchi in Geita access
the vital resource through boreholes and the remaining 89 per cent of
them use unsafe water.
Speaking with The Citizen, some residents
said majority of them rely on ponds of rainwater to fetch water for
their domestic use, a situation they said posed serious health threats
since there have been reports that such sources were found to have
contaminated with mercury.
“Currently we use rain water but as soon as the
rain season ends we continue using water fetched from boreholes and dams
whose safety is still questionable,” said Ms Prisca Makene, a resident
of Nyanza in Geita.
They also stated that they were spending
significant amount of their money for buying the vital liquid during
summer. “Given the acute shortage of water that prevail during summer
when many boreholes dry up, a single household may spend up to Sh500,000
per month to only buy water for domestic purposes,” said a resident of
Nyankumbu, Ms Neema Charles.
Adding: “During this tough period, one wakes up at
5am for starting journey to places where boreholes are located only to
return home in the afternoon or evening due to long queues of people in
need of water from the same sources.”
Mr Martine Daudi, also a resident of Geita Urban
said: “Food vendors here also use the same dirty water fetched from
Nyankumbu Dam to prepare their food.”
Many Geita residents banked their hopes in the
ongoing water project initiated by the Geita Gold Mine (GGM) back in
2005 that will benefit over 12,000 people.
GGM communication manager Tenga Tenga said moved
by the serious water shortage that Geita residents encountered, they
initiated a project worth Sh10.2 billion to address the problem.
Mr Tenga said: “It was a joint project between us
and the government through the ministry of Water, Geita Urban Water
Supply and Sanitation Authority as well as the Geita Town Council.”
He added that as per the project contract, GGM was
supposed to lay the infrastructure for carrying water from Lake
Victoria to Geita, leaving water distribution work to the government and
its agencies. However, he noted that the project failed since the
government lacked funds for implementing its part of the project,
compelling the mining company to sign another contract in 2014 for
completing the remaining part of the project.
“The project resumed after we successful installed
pipes for supply water from the source as well as installing water
storage facilities here to the final stage of building a network of
pipes for supplying water to the project beneficiaries. The construction
work stopped after the theft of some project equipment we had shipped
and kept in our premises,” said Mr Tenga.
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