Water scarcity hits Kitgum municipality

Kitgum, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT  |  Several residents in some parts of Kitgum Municipality have raised concern over water shortage. 

This follows an irregular supply of water since the month started by the National Water and Sewerage Corporation- Nwsc.

The situation has since affected several households, business premises and learning institutions, forcing hundreds of water users to turn to the available few unsafe boreholes and wells. 

Doreen Acan, the Head Teacher of Kitgum Public Primary School, one of the schools hit hard by the water shortage says that the irregular water supply has greatly affected the learning of Primary Seven pupils. The school currently has a total of 167 candidates waiting to sit for Primary Leaving Examination- PLE.

She says it has been a daunting challenge for the management to adequately provide water for usage by the pupils, teachers, and support staff. At some points, she says pupils who are in boarding have to trek long distances outside school premises in search of water for laundry work, bathing and drinking.

According to Acan, the management has since been buying water from the nearby water sources but notes that it’s becoming expensive to sustain.

“We sometimes send people to buy water in jerry-cans for our pupils and the staffs to use, we have also been getting water freely from Kitgum Hospital and the Mosque but all this is proving to be costly to transport,” She says.

Irene Adong, a resident of Central Division says their tap went dry on Friday and since then they haven’t had a single drop of water. She says the family shifted to a nearby borehole but expressed fear that the borehole water may be contaminated with fecal matters due to the high population and latrine structures around it.

Ivan Tekakwo, the NWSC Public Relations Officer for Northern Region acknowledges the water challenge in the Municipality and attributes it to the current unreliable electricity supply.

He says power blackout occasionally forces them to rely on using a generator which is costly and most times operated at only half capacity to pump less quantity of water. For close to two weeks now, there has been intermittent power supply in Kitgum Municipality.

Tekakwo also notes that the demand for water within Kitgum Municipality has recently shot up this dry season since several water points such as river and wellsprings have dried up leaving tap water as the only alternative.

NWSC has been pumping about two million litres of water daily to their clients within Kitgum Municipality. However, with the intermittent electricity, the supply has dropped between one million and sometimes only 900,000 litres of water daily according to Tekakwo.

Currently, a total of 3,791 clients are directly connected to the NWSC pipeline with thousand more benefiting from buying.

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