Kumbungu Water Crisis: Community Mobilizes Resources To Desilt Their Dried Dam

A dam serving about 8,000 in the Bognaayili community and its environs in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region has dried up with the people left with nowhere to get water.

For the past few months, women have adopted a method of digging holes within the enclave of the dam hoping that they hit the water but that has not yielded any result. This has compelled a youth group in the area to mobilize their resources to desilt the dam and reconstruction it ahead of the rains.

Even though water shortage is an annual ritual in the area the situation has worsened his year and Bognaayi, a farming community in the Kumbungu District with three adjoining communities have not been spared of the impact of this shortage.

Speaking to MX24 News upon a visit to the community, a resident Yakubu Inusah said they had to mobilize their resources to hire the services of a bulldozer to desilt the dam. He said the age-old dam has never witnessed any desilting making it difficult to absorb enough water during raining season. Mr. Inusah said so far, they have expended GHS 118,000.00 to desilt the dam but yet have not hit the water level.

“The water shortage in the village is an old age problem and the dam you just visited has never seen any desilting; we the community members are being levied so that we can raise enough money to desilt the dam; each day we pay the bulldozer operator GHS 11,800 and we are doing this for 10 days which is costing us to a tune of GHS118,000.00, we have no option than to cough out this money in this hard times,” he said.

Mr. Inusah said the inhabitants in the area especially women and children have suffered a lot due to this water crisis. “our women’s businesses have come to a standstill, and education has been affected because of the hours they spend outside in search of water; some of the work our wives do demand enough water and as you can see our dam has dried up completely for the past three months you can imagine the difficulty” he said.

Mr. Inusah accused the politicians in the area of not keeping faith in their promises of giving them safe drinking water and threatened that the community members will chase out any politician who will attempt to campaign in the area if their water situation is not fixed.

“This money that we are spending is the community initiative and nobody has supported us but we want to send this signal to our politicians that if they don’t come in quickly to support us, no politician should come here and campaign” he stated.

A resident Hawabu Mohammed said they have been battling water crises for over 10 years now a situation she said is affecting their education and businesses.
“It has been 10 years since we have been battling with this water crisis, it is worrying us because we spend several hours searching for water,” she said

Madam Hawabu added that women have to go to different communities in search of water and by the time they return it is always late for their children to go to school.

Another resident Hadija Yakubu said the women travel to far communities to fetch water for domestic use.

“Currently the water situation in the Bognaayili community is worse now, we go to nearby communities for water even getting water for food preparation is difficult for us now,” she said.

She added that even if the water they fetch is not safe for drinking they are compelled to drink and cook with it.
Madam Hadija appealed to the government, Kumbungu District Assembly, benevolence organizations, and their Member of Parliament to come to their aid.

SOURCE: Simon Unyan, Northern Regional Content Manager (MX24 Tv)