January 10, 2022
By Ilyasa Baa
Residents of Kissy especially those residing in the mountainous communities including Upper Looking Town, Soja Town, Moheba, First Street and so on have started benefiting from the uninterrupted supply of pure pipe borne water through the Kissy Water Project.
Those communities have been benefitting from this project for the past five years but the previous rainy season led to the destruction of the pipes resulting to months without the usual water supply.
This under development, according to the beneficiaries, influenced teenage pregnancy since school girls have to fetch water sometimes at night from the rocky stream.
The Chief Executive Officer, (CEO), Kissy Water Project, Hassan Beacca Sesay told A-Z newspaper that the expansion of the population of Kissy warranted an intervention to salvage the water situation since the Guma Valley Water Company is not able to reach those hillside communities.
He said his father took electricity to those communities in the past, so he follows his footsteps in terms of development by being the first person to provide over seventeen thousand people with pure, affordable water right from the hills of Kissy.
He expressed his dissatisfaction that since the project commenced; nobody has come to his aid by helping to secure the pipes or making financial contributions to sustain the water supply. He noted that millions of Leones have been spent on maintenance and purchasing of pipes after vehicles, motor bikes damage some of the pipes as a result of erosion.
“I want to sustain the supply throughout the seasons and let my people get water”, he said, adding that the sustainability of the supply helps to complement the Hands Off Our Girls campaign engineered by the First Lady of Sierra Leone, Her Excellency Madam Fatima Bio.
“While people were busy enjoying Christmas and New Year holidays, I and my team were doing the repairs from up the dam site to the taps right down the hill “, Hassan disclosed.
He called on the Ministry of Water Resources, NGOs and stakeholders of Kissy to come to his aid so that the dam can be expanded to supply more communities.
He said he has received several calls for extension of the facility to other areas but he is not in the position to do that because he alone does not have the resources to take up that venture, he had maintained.
Board Chairman of the Kissy Water Project, Musa Sesay said there is need for NGOs and well-wishers to come on board to sustain the water supply.
He commended the CEO for his initiative noting that the reopening of the taps has brought smiles on the faces of the residents who have been for months without access to that kind of well treated water.
He also expressed the need for concerted efforts to ensure the sustainability of the water supply.
Deputy Section Chief of Soja Town, Momoh Kallon disclosed that the reopening of their community taps is a blessing for the women particularly. He said the terrain is rocky making it a difficult task to fetch water from the stream though untreated. He said the Kissy Water Project is their only hope for getting pure water as water is life.
Resident of Gbere Junction (Upper Looking Town), said their prayer for the resumption of the water supply has been achieved noting that the taps are now full of people as it used to be. She thanked the project implementers especially Hassan Beacca Sesay saying they are doing well for the various homes that benefit from the water they have been supplying. She said girls and boys used to fetch water throughout the day covering far distances but now they only need to get to the taps easily to fetch the quantity of water they need.
Chairman of the Soja Town community, Osman S. Conteh said the measure that was put in place earlier that people should start paying small amount was in place and timely since maintenance and payment of workers have to be met. He challenged that this time security will be intensified to secure the dam and pipes for sustainability of the water supply.
Pipe borne water has been a major challenge in most hard to reach communities in the Western Area where people have to pay little amount of money to get water even if it is not pure for drinking purpose.
The huge demand for drinking water has sparked up a good number of little water companies all around the place. The government has spent billions of Leones on water supply but needs to do more considering the expansion of the communities and their population.