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Vandalism on water pipes hits Dar
2006-01-15 08:07:19
By Deodatus Mfugale
Access to clean and safe water is now a human right but while DAWASCO strives to supply Dar es Salaam residents with the precious liquid, there are views that most of the would be recipients abuse this right by purposely cutting the supply pipes.
As a result, about 75 percent of the water ends up pouring on the roadside and paths, leaving the consumers with dry pipes.
Among areas that are notorious for the practice include Tabata Dampo and Buguruni where water fills in the storm drains whenever these areas are supplied with water. The former is in principle, supposed to be supplied with water twice a week.
However, residents face shortage of water a day after their allocation as only a small fraction of the supply reaches the consumers.
Even with storage facilities like jerry cans and plastic tanks, many consumers cannot store enough to meet their needs.
Some people have attributed the practice to unauthorized connections done by some consumers who also employ unqualified people to do it.
’’They just pick the young men who hang around here to connect the pipes. But since these are not technicians, they fix them anyhow and when the supply is on, water simply gashes on the roadside,’’ explained Jamal Mbala, a resident of Tabata Darajani.
Mbala is a soldier who works at Mabibo station.
He explained that sometimes the pipes are located hardly an inch below the surface, a situation which makes them easily damaged.
Commenting on the issue, the Local Government Chairman for Tabata Matumbi , Muhidini Samalu conceded that broken water pipes is a big problem in the area since this situation leads to wastage.
’’People here should not complain about water shortage because a good amount of what is supplied by DAWASCO is wasted. The local government here has advised individual families to protect the pipes that supply water to their houses but many of them do not heed the advice and so the problem prevails,’’ he told this reporter.
Samalu claimed that sometimes the local government officials identify the offenders who destroy the pipes and report them to the police but no action is taken against them.
’’Failure to enforce existing regulations compounds this problem,’’ he noted.
Ester Mkalama, a resident of Buguruni, told The Sunday Observer that unruly youths in the area break the pipes purposely so as to cut off the supply to the residents. This then enables them to sell water to the residents.
’’This is unfair because we have to spend money on water which we would otherwise have spent on other needs. We have complained to the local government about the youths but no one seems to care,’’ she said.
Mkalama explained that the destruction of water pipes compounds health risks since they have to depend on vendors for their supply of water.
Besides the high price that the water vendors charge, the source of their water is questionable. Sometimes, she said, the vendors fetch the water from just anywhere if they don’t get it from the broken pipes.
’’We cannot tell how safe the water is. Sometimes I tell the vendor to take a sip from all the jerry cans that I buy just to get some kind of assurance that the water is safe. But this is really no guarantee. Their only concern is money,’’ she stressed.
He urged individual consumers and local government officials to take centre stage in protecting the pipes so that all the water that is supplied reaches the consumers. ’’ DAWASCO’s duty is to supply the water to the consumers but they should share the responsibility of ensuring that the supply lines are safe,’’she insisted.
However, in another development a new wave of vandalism swept Magomeni area of Dar es Salaam this week as residents openly cut pipes and collected water free of charge.
While some people collected the water for domestic use, the majority of those who were behind the vandalism sold the water to other residents from the area and nearby areas for 200/- per 20 litres.
The new wave of destruction of pipes is another blow to DAWSCO, which strives to supply the city residents with clean and safe water.
The new stage of vandalism started on Monday and went on until Thursday even after DAWASCO had erected a kiosk that would sell water to the residents and so guarantee them of the supply.
DAWASCO technicians tried to attend to the problem and cut off the supply at the main pipes, an action that drew hostility from the unruly youths.
Some of the company’s technicians were pelted with stones and had to seek police assistance.
One of the technicians found working on a pipe at Magomeni Mapipa told The Observer that wastage of water through broken pipes affects their target to supply the majority of city residents with clean and safe water.
Under the circumstances he said funds that would otherwise be spent to connect new consumers are used to repair the broken pipes. ’’
We are supplying fewer new consumers than we had targeted,’’ noted the technician who did not want his name published, as he was not the company’s spokesperson.
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