(ERGO)- “I have been drinking clean water for 18 days!” a delighted Rukiya Hussein told Radio Ergo, after a new water collection and storage system was installed in three camps for internally displaced families in a rural part of Bardhere district in southern Somalia’s Gedo region.
Since 15 September, 1,270 displaced families in these camps, where access to water has been a perennial problem, have been appreciating the provision of water in a project by International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Most families in the camps were displaced from their homes by drought and have been relying on water from the river Juba, three km away from the camps.
“I have been living in this camp for more than two years now. After I lost my livestock to the drought in the rural areas of Fafahdhun, it wasn’t possible for me and my children to return to the countryside. Though life in the camp is hard, I am happy that by God’s grace we now have water, because we used to go to the river in search of water,” said Rukiya.
A committee tasked with distributing the water allocates 40 litres to each household per day.
Rukiya, living in Kaam-jirih camp, said she uses the 40 litres only for drinking and cooking and gets water for laundry and washing utensils from the river.
She gets by on proceeds from a shop in the camp, where she sells enough vegetables to afford to prepare one or two meals a day for the family.
Mohamud Salad, director of water, sanitation and hygiene for IOM, said the system aims to
improve access to clean water and sanitation. He said when river water levels were very low, people had been reduced to drinking contaminated water.
Saynab Abdi Aden, living in Horsed camp, was displaced five years ago from Busar village in Elwaq district. The 49-year-old said the loss of about 100 goats, 30 camels and 10 cows forced her and her family of 14 to migrate to the camp. Her family depends on $2 a day, which she earns from carrying vegetables to the market to be sold by others.
The system includes six shallow wells (berkeds) and three water tanks. The shallow wells
receive water from the tanks that are filled by river water pumped by generator. Each camp has one water tank with rows of taps and two shallow wells for water storage.
Osman Muse, Horsed camp chairman, said the challenge they are facing now is managing the long queues so that all 500 families can get water at the taps.
Local and regional authorities have tried and failed several times to drill usable boreholes in
Bardhere, but the water produced was not fit for human consumption.
