By Dean Chisambo
Member of Parliament for Dedza north constituency Savel Kafwafwa has appealed to donor community and some well wishers to come and support the people of his constituency with tapped water and tarmac road which is impassable during rain season.
Kafwafwa said the issue of water is quite big in Dedza north constituency especially Mayani trading centre which is one of the top four largest trading centre in Malawi but is still using the borehole water and others are using unsafely water.
He said: what normally happens is when you have a large population against a single borehole the breakdown of the borehole itself is an often frequent and this is what exactly we are facing in Malayani.
“As it is a set up in Malawi most women are struggling after a busy day they have to kill an hour just to get a bucket of water, so this is one of the greatest challenges.But it’s not Mayani trading centre but it’s equally in other villages like Kankhunda, Mtemwende, Lodzanyama and Kafwafwa.These villages you see that the number of borehole versus population they do not tally but the greatest challenge more is at Mayani trading centre”.
Kafwafwa further said it’s time to start transitioning although borehole is a good technology but it coming now old technology saying they need new ways of delivering water to the large population.
He also said they managed to source tap water through the district council to Chauma which is one of the biggest village in the constituency which required seven borehole to be sufficient but one tapped water they distributed to six kiosks to the whole village that solved the whole issue about the water challenge in that village which costed them K21 million in 2021 to 2022 national budget.
Kafwafwa said although government has set a special fund called water fund which valued at 12 million can not tally to build one tapped water system and the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) it suppose to be about K300 million not K100 million to solve the issues in Malawi adequately.
He said road infrastructure is also a big challenge although they used K20 million last year from Constituency Development Fund just to do the gravelling on the road saying other wise the road would become impassable during the rain season.
He said: “This year we have used also K10 million to gravel the road,but soon after we have finished the gravelling there was every heavy storm rainfall and it has reapeted for three times and now the big vehicle carrying AIP fertilizers are also going to this road, so when it wet they also damaging the road because the trucks are heavy.
“The major solution to make sure that road becomes passable it actually doing a tarmac that I always been appealing, but so far we have been trying our best using the CDF and all source that we can get, just last week I used my own money to repair some parts of the road that becomes impassable even after doing the gravelling, so the road is challenging and it is one of the busy rural road in Malawi”.
Kafwafwa also said the road actually connect to Salima at Katerera 64 kilometers from Nkhoma hospital going to Mayani for about 21 kilometers and another 43 kilometers to Salima which is a good short cut that would have increased the their economic activities around the area.
He added that his Constituency need K130 million to cater all the challenges which are affecting people which will going to build five piped water projects one targeting Mayani trading centre and other big villages which will benefited the population of over 200,000 people.
On his part Group village headman Saidi Lali said water scarcity at Mayani trading centre is worrisome development because over 3000 people depend on single borehole which is located at Mayani trading centre that makes women to fight over each other on daily basis when they are fetching water.
On her remarks one of the women who has been fetching water at Mayani trading centre Mariam Cassim said life is tough when it comes to water issues at Mayani trading centre because it needs to wake up six o’clock am and fetched water at around eleven o’clock due to congestion that lead women always to fight each other at the borehole.
She further urged the authorities, donors and well wishers to intervene and helped them with tapped water that can make their life easy.
On his side Henry Bengo one of the taxi drivers at Mayani trading centre said the Mayani road becomes impassable during rainy season that makes them difficult to do their business.
He urged the government and other well wishers to construct tarmac road for them since the road becomes impassable each every year in the rainy season.
Research has shown that women in Malawi spend four hours of the day searching for some water instead of using their time for development activities.
