CAPPA – Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa

Provide clean, free water for citizens

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As this year’s World Water Day is commemorated globally, governments have been urged to desist from the water privatisation model and provide clean quality and potable water free for citizens.

Co-ordinator of African Women Water Sanitation and Hygiene Network (AWWASHNET) Veronica Nwanya spoke at a programme in Lagos to mark the event.

Nwanya, who spoke on this year’s theme: “Groundwater – making the invisible visible,” said: ‘’We celebrate the importance, usefulness, benefits of access and roles groundwater plays to women in hygiene and sanitation system, agriculture, industry, ecosystem, climate change adoption, the environments generally and how women have fared in accessing groundwater”.

Groundwater in the words of Associate Director of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) Aderonke Ige for some reason is becoming a faded scenario in villages and communities.

“There were days in the community where the only source of water was groundwater, you walk down the stream, lakes and rivers, some from the rock inside the ground, while some we believe comes naturally from the ground, whichever way, groundwater is the safest and most healthy source of water.

“To this end, this year’s World Water Day theme is a wake-up call for leaders to ensure adequate maintenance of the groundwater system for the supply, healthy environmental assessment, and citizen conducive accessible usage,” said Ige.

Economically, groundwater, the chairperson of AWWASHNET Lady Vickie Uremma Onyekuru said, must be sustained because it has no cost implication in accessing it.

“The Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to ensure clean, stable and safe water supply and effective water sanitation by 2030’’.

‘’So many things have gone wrong that groundwater is no longer what it used to be. Environmental degradation and pollution have caused more havoc than benefits to groundwater usage,” Onyekuru lamented.

Governments are enjoined to ensure the completion of abandoned water projects, and groundwater management

AWWASHNet observed that lack of or inadequate availability of clean and safe drinking water is the cause of some life-threatening illnesses.

Lagos State, Nigeria and African leaders are advised to make groundwater as visible, sustainable and viable as possible.

Source: The Nation

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