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Cast more critical eye at water issue
2008-02-07 09:05:19
By Edit
As a plane from overseas flies low as it descends to land at the Julius Nyerere International Airport, a first-time visitor to Tanzania gets the impression that Dar es Salaam is a modern city.
The impression of the visitor, who happens to be a high-profile tourist, is partly confirmed by the first-rate amenities availed to him at a high-class hotel in a city that he later learns is romantically known as ``the haven of peace``, the original Arabic version of which is ``Bandar-el-salaam``.
One of the basic amenities is water, which flows smoothly from the taps in the shower-room at his prompting, for which he is even given the hot-warm-cold options.
From hotel to hotel as he samples tourist attractions in other parts of the country, the going is plain-sailing. But the visitor, due to innocent detachment to Tanzanian or, broadly, African affairs, may be surprised and even confused if he came across some news items in the local media on water shortage in some parts of Dar es Salaam - and smaller urban centres - illustrated by photographs of long queues, mostly of women at supply, standing beside containers like pails and drums.
It soon dawns on him that an amenity taken for granted back home, and which would otherwise not cross his mind since supply at the hotels in which he resided was in inexhaustible, is a fairly critical social problem.
The visitor, like his hosts for whom the problem is all too familiar, is upset by the contrast between the nice view his eyes feasted on from the sky and shortage of an amenity that is so basic.
The water problem in Dar is indeed something that is most upsetting, because it is linked to one of the three principal enemies that Tanzanians vowed to wage a serious war against upon becoming a sovereign country in 1961 - diseases; the others being poverty and ignorance.
Shortage of clean and safe water naturally curtails human health, manifestations of which include people being hospitalised, and whose welfare is further compromised by lack of water in the medical institutions.
Ideally, water should be available on as geographically equitable a basis as possible. This can’t be attained at a go, but on a phased, long-term basis, due to financial and other limitations.
Resource constraints notwithstanding, for Dar es Salaam, as the country’s nerve-centre, and nearly 47 years down the post- independence road, water supply should have been struck off the list of major problems.
Right up to the Central Business District, the precious liquid vanishes when technical hitches affect the supply system, and to avoid injured pride, operators of hotels and other businesses keep reservoirs, just in case…
City residents and those in its environs who depend on the Pugu station source are regularly cast psychologically off-balance, ``thanks`` to supply interruptions.
In quite many suburbs, some people saw supposedly supply pipes as children, but have grown up not having experienced any water flowing through them.
And hundreds of houses have plumbing systems whose owners hope and pray that some day, water will flow through them.
In the interim, some have acquired water wells at relatively high cost and endure the cost of electric pumping.
Their rural compatriots - save for a few lucky ones here and there - fare worse, as piped water is a very distant dream.
However, it is a dream, which we are confident the government can and should turn into reality this is the time we should be focusing our attention and dreams on things like information technology, and not on water shortage for domestic use.
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