The rush by people to draw water in Migori County has risen in the past few weeks with a majority of residents carrying yellow plastic containers in search of this important natural resource.
The trigger is the prolonged dry spell weather condition that is not only affecting Migori County but also several other regions across the country.
The impact has forced people to mobilise all means of transport at their disposal to help fetch and ferry the now highly sought after commodity. The common means of transport are donkeys, hand pulled or donkey pull carts, bicycles, cars and lorries, besides human transport.
But while the drought is real, investigations have revealed that the huge water tanks seen perched on many hills and on raised grounds in Migori are still holding millions of litres of water that is sufficient for correcting the anomaly.
According to information available to KNA, towns and markets like Migori, Awendo, Isebania, Rongo, Uriri and Ranen are not supposed to suffer from acute water shortage as is the situation at the moment.
Mr. William Ochieng’, a resident of Migori town, claims that the town is experiencing lack of water because of corruption and inept behavior of the officials at the Migori Water and Sanitation Company (MIWASCO) offices and water department in the County.
“How can water taps become dry within the town here yet the tanks up there are at the moment filled to the bream? What is ailing this sector is corruption and pure ineptness in properly handling water distributions to consumers,” he said during an interview with him in Migori town recently.
His accusation against MIWASCO officials is believed by many who also point accusing fingers on some of the business people from the private sector who are said to be colluding with water officials to sabotage smooth distribution of water in towns and markets to consumers for their own benefit.
A majority of water consumers in local towns and markets now complain of a well calculated move by a clique of senior water company and water department officials to mess up smooth distribution of water in the region in a bid to open up lucrative opportunities to owners of water boozers of supplying expensive water for their own benefit.
“We want thorough investigations to be conducted against some top County Government officials who are engaging in serious business of hawking water with water boozers leading to perennial dry taps in Migori town and elsewhere within this county,” urged Mr. Vincent Marwa, a resident of Oruba estate within Migori town.
Marwa and other residents say that they have sensed a sinister motive in the abrupt emergence of too many water boozers in the region, a situation that they say is allegedly intended to sabotage water distribution in the region.
The water cartels including senior county officials, have bought big lorries and turned them into water boozers which they use to supply water in parts of Migori whose waterlines they have interfered with to trigger artificial rationing or completely dry taps, claimed Marwa.
These people ensure that normal water distribution by MIWASCO is totally curtailed in cahoots with the company and the water department officials to help drive their evil mission of making huge profits at the expense of innocent water consumers, added another water consumer in Awendo town, which is also wallowing in water shortage.
True to their suspicion, water has become a very expensive and hard-to-get commodity, to the benefit of the business people who are now labelled ‘water cartels’, which operate over 50 water boozers in the region.
Hardest hit areas are always the Migori Referral Hospital where inpatients have to bear with the shortage as their families walk long distances to look for this commodity and take back to hospital for patients’ use when the hospital administration fails to purchase water from the private boozers.
Other affected places are the Migori GK Prisons, government offices, schools and estates like Oruba and Nyasare in Migori town and, Jiw Dendi in Awendo town where tens of households always experience dry taps for up to three weeks in a row.
Migori region experiences severe lack of clean water for domestic use, yet there are three huge water treatment plants that the National Government in collaboration with international donors helped established within the area years ago.
However, the plants that gobbled billions of shillings are today underutilized to the point that even as water is massively harvested and stored, not enough is treated and pumped to the reservoir tanks for distribution to customers.
“We have the Oyani-Magongo water treatment plant system that is always lying idle because there is no money to purchase the necessary chemicals to treat water or money to pay power bills to allow constant pumping of water to reservoir tanks for smooth distribution,” explained a staff at the Water Company offices who pleaded for anonymity for fear being punished for making comments on the water issues.
According to other secret sources from the company and ministry, MIWASCO accumulates up to Sh3 million in power bills every month, which it fails to pay due to low revenue collections thereby leading to constant power cuts to their machines at the treatment plants as power company disconnects them.
A part from the Oyani-Magongo water plant, there are also the Isebania Water Treatment plant that was designed to serve Sirare-Town in the neighbouring country Tanzania but is not being utilised optimally.
The now white Elephant project, The Awendo Water Treatment Plant that was jointly constructed by the Kenya and Korea governments has never worked since its launch a decade ago.
Hence Awendo town and its environs has remained a perennial water problem region with residents using untreated water year in year out.
But MIWASCO managing Director (MD) Mr. Sam Nyandiga has in the past weeks been assuring residents that they are doing everything possible to improve water services within the region and denies claims of fraud in the water sector.
“We are doing expansion and repairs of our lines and soon water distribution will be up-graded to satisfy all our customers,” he recently told a meeting discussing water problem within the region.
By George Agimba
