Women in Bodo City in Gokana Local Government area of Rivers State have cried out over the suffering they have been subjected to following the collapse of electricity supply to the community for over two months now.
The women who made the lamentation at a programme organized by Kebetkache Women Development and Research Centre, a Port Harcourt-based non-governmental organization, to mark the International World Water Day said the lack of electricity has also taken a toll on water supply as many of them depended on domestic water got from boreholes powered by electricity.
In emotion-laden voices, the women said the power outage that has lasted for as long as two months, has disorganized their lives, made access to water difficult.
They said people who owned private boreholes in the community were also finding it difficult to open access to their water supply because they spend so much to buy fuel to power the generators they use to pump water from their boreholes.
“They now shut their gates, making water very difficult to access,” said the women, who said they were now forced to source water from neighbouring communities at great cost, including man-hour loss and exposure to risks.
One of the women, Madam Grace stated that she came to the World Water Day programme late because she was cold not find water early enough to bathe.
She further lamented that even though there is a public water facility in the community, supply was not yet regular. She said the general water situation was affecting many things in the community including, the service delivery at the General Hospital.
The women appealed to Governor Siminalayi Fubara and Gokana Local Government chairman to step in to address the power and water problem as water is both life and livelihood.
They also appealed to the management of HYPREP to restore normal operations at the Bodo Water scheme to enable easy flow of water in the community. The women urged their political representatives from local government to state and the National Assembly, to rise to the challenge by bringing Bodo Community matters to the decision-making floor so their needs can be met.
In her opening remarks read out by the programme manager Idongesit Smart, the Executive Director of Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, Dr Emem Okon, stressed that water was vital for survival and that women and girls bore a huge burden when water was not easily accessible.
She noted that about two billion people worldwide lacked access to clean water and that according to the UN, ‘Women and girls spend over 250 million-hours daily collecting water, often losing out on education and income opportunities,” a development she said, adds to inequality in society.
Dr. Okon called for gender sensitivity in the design of policies on water and water infrastructure to accommodate women’s interests including affordability.
The keynote speaker and daughter of the community, Dr Stella Armamie, highlighted in her presentation, the importance of designing water policies and projects that aim to reduce the peculiar challenges faced by women and girls in accessing water just as she advised women to learn to use water wisely and avoid waste.
The women were further advised to protect the rivers, seas and oceans by ensuring that plastics are properly disposed of through re-use, recycling and other means, noting that recycling plastics was another way of creating wealth.
The Bodo World Water Day commemoration kicked off with a clean-up exercise at the waterfront by both the Kebetkache team and the community women. The aim was to teach the women the need to keep the waterfront free from harmful waste like plastics so that the waters and mangroves could breathe, procreate and help man live in cleaner environment.
