NAN-AE-3
Amenities
By Tosin Kolade
Abuja, June 19, 2017 (NAN) Residents of Kpaduma II community on Monday called on the FCT Administration (FCTA) to drill more boreholes in the neighbourhood so as to reduce the menace of water-borne diseases in the area.
They told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the provision of boreholes and other basic amenities such as health centres and schools in the community would enable the residents to live healthy, productive lives.
A spokesman for the community, Mr Alhassan Yau, said that it was saddening to note that in spite the proximity of the community to Asokoro — one of the highbrow areas of Abuja — there was no government presence in the area at all.
“We have only one borehole in this community; people queue and spend hours to get water; some give up in the process because you may end up spending hours to fetch water.
“All we see is that during election campaigns, politicians come around to solicit votes for particular candidates, making promises, but we don’t see them afterwards,’’ he said.
Yau said the only borehole in the community could not service the water needs of the over 5,000 residents.
According to him, a lot of the residents resort to buying water from water vendors who usually sell their commodity at high prices.
“When we need water, we usually buy water from Mairuwa (water vendor); we don’t know the source of the water but we don’t have any other alternatives,’’ he said.
Yau said that the FCTA had failed to live up to its expectations on water supply to the citizens, adding that residents of the community were going through untold hardships in getting potable water.
Another resident, Mannaseh Godwin, said that the residents who could not afford to buy water from water vendors had no other option than to trek long distances to fetch water for their domestic uses.
He appealed to the FCTA and philanthropists to provide water supply outlets for the community in order to reduce the number of children dying from water-borne diseases.
He said that women and girls usually spent long hours searching for water in faraway streams and rivers, saying that this had eaten up into the time they ought to use for productive ventures.
A civil servant, Mrs Alice Adayilo, said that children from the community were usually afflicted with diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea, saying this had negatively affected the schooling of several children.
She said that she had to trek long distances to get fetch for household uses, adding that other women in the community had similar experiences.
Besides, Adayilo bemoaned the non-availability of child delivery facilities in Kpaduma II had compelled women to give birth at home under the supervision of traditional birth attendants, saying the only health centre in the community had no facilities for child delivery.
She said that many women died while giving birth, while in some cases, the newborns also died due to lack of emergency care to arrest childbirth complications.
NAN recalls that the President, Association of Resident Doctors, Dr Fernandez Akinnagbe, while carrying out a medical outreach Kpaduma II recently, described the dearth of basic amenities in the community as an “injustice’’.
Akinnagbe said that Kpaduma II community, which had over 5,000 inhabitants, had inadequate waste disposal and health facilities as well as schools.
He also noted that the community had only one borehole to supply potable water to all the residents of the community.
He urged the FCTA to provide affordable health care services for all the people in the FCT, including the residents of Kpaduma II community. (NAN)
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