Women fear water crisis will affect economic activities

Sanzie, (UW/R)-Ghana, April 11, GNA – Women at Sanzie, a farming community in the Wa West District, say the inadequate number of boreholes in the community will adversely affect their agricultural and other economic activities as rains set in.
They said women and girls in the community were the worst affected by the water crisis as they had to spend productive hours queuing at the borehole to fetch water before they could engage in any other activity.
Madam Abena Maaloo, a resident, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview at the community that besides the impact of the situation on their productivity, women also sometimes quarreled with their husbands on the farm due to the time they spent at home before getting to the farm.
She said only one borehole in the community was serving the Sanzie residents as well as the people of the Kori community thereby compounding the problems.
Mr Caesar Dabuo, another resident, indicated that the population of the communities had outweighed the capacity of the borehole and the women and girls were at the receiving end of hurdles.
He noted that over 400 women in the community were relying on the single borehole.
“The women in these two communities are more than 400 and they all depend on this one borehole.
Because of this, the borehole is always working for 24 hours, and easily breaks down. Only God knows where we will get water from when it breaks down too”, he explained.
Some of the residents said they could have engaged in dry season farming to earn livelihoods if there were enough sources of water in the community.
Meanwhile, Mr Ephraim Y. Dassah, the Assembly Member of the area, noted that a Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) had promised to drill a borehole for the community, but said he was not sure how soon the intervention would arrive.
He, therefore, appealed to benevolent organisations and individuals to come to the aid of the Sanzie and Kori communities, especially the women and girls to help alleviate the challenges they were currently going through.
Mr Dassah said the rearing of animals in the area was also affected by the lack of a dam in the community.
“We want to engage the contractors of the EU roads project in the electoral area so that where they will fetch the gravels, they can create a dugout in the process so that at the end of the day we will not lose and they will also gain,” the Assembly Member explained.