Talensi: Residents flee village over unsafe drinking water

Residents of Guborigo, a community in the Talensi District of the Upper East region, are fleeing the area due to unbearable scarcity of safe drinking water.

Members of the community, who claim some diseases have invaded their neighbourhood through the condition of the water they are compelled to drink, are holding successive governments responsible for their plight.

Competing with animals over dugouts

Residents of the area have lived with scarcity of safe drinking water for several decades.

They compete with roaming animals including cows, pigs and goats for water from the thinning pouch of a few dugouts available in the community. And when the dugouts dry up within the eight months of the dry season, they turn their attention to the White Volta, a river which is about 12 kilometres away from the community.

Whilst some depend on carts drawn by donkeys to cover the distance that separates the river from the community, there are those who deal with the daily struggle on foot. The plight of the residents is not just the distance they endure in search of water but also the waterborne diseases they claim are now prevalent in the area owing to the condition of the water they drink. The situation has led to residents fleeing the area and blaming successive governments for their trouble.

“I can’t stay here because of this water problem. I was born and brought up here. But because of the water, I can’t stay here. I need to run to the city. Even animals would not like to take the water that we are drinking. We are appealing to you to let the top know that there are Ghanaians somewhere suffering a lot,” a fleeing resident, Mohammed Abagna, told Starr News.

Joseph Asandow, a political activist in the area, lamented: “As you can see, animals will reject this water. We do get rashes and stomach aches and so many other things which if you don’t have clean water it can bring to human beings. For the water problem, since 1992. So, imagine, from 1992 and this community has been voting.”

Hope for “the Village of Yellow Jerrycans”

Jerrycans, mostly yellow in colour, have become a treasure every household in the area must keep to be able to store water fetched on a daily basis from the river. This explains why Guborigo has lived with the tag “the village of yellow gallons” for decades.

Perhaps, the only rays of hope members of the community have today lie within the promise made on behalf of government by Hajia Rahinatu Haruna (popularly known as Hajia Charity) when she led a group known as the John Mahama Ladies to the community on Sunday.

Hajia Rahinatu Haruna, who was in the community to present food items, blankets, kitchen utensils and a motorcycle, told residents of the community government would provide a borehole for them by the end of April, this year. The donation was done on behalf of President John Dramani Mahama in fulfillment of a campaign promise made before the Talensi by-election held in 2015.

“They have nowhere to turn for help. They want the JM ladies to go back and tell their father, President John Dramani Mahama, to assist them, speak to the Honourable Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Alhaji Collins Dauda, to come down to their rescue. They are happy for what we have done for them. We have given them light and roads; but water has remained a problem. By ending of April, they will get their water,” she said.

The JM Ladies set to upset NPP

The John Mahama Ladies, widely known in short as the JM Ladies, made their presence felt at the event with the colours of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) dabbed on the Mahama-branded white T-shirts they wore.

The group, which was formed in September, 2012, to win and maintain power for President Mahama and all NDC parliamentary candidates across the country, swore to hand the New Patriotic Party (NPP) a crushing defeat in both the presidential and the parliamentary elections at the upcoming November polls.

“It's going to be a tug of war. We have done it before. Our campaign, with all the developmental projects we have undertaken, are enough evidence to support our message to win for us all the seats in the region. Even, if it means going beyond the region as JM Ladies to annex as many seats as we can in the other regions for the NDC, we are ready for November," Sayidatu Amadu, Acting Secretary of the group, told journalists.

The declaration comes after the NPP had announced their intention to clinch half of the fifteen seats in the NDC’s stronghold of the Upper East region.