Humanitarian organisation, GOAL, has announced the revamping of 27 water boreholes in Bugiri and Namayingo districts in Uganda.
The nonprofit, which focuses on building community resilience and supporting socio-economic development, said in the announcement that the 27 boreholes will scale access to clean drinking water for over 150,000 community members.
The project, with funding from the Irish Aid and Water User Committees (WUC), is in line with goal six of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
‘27 boreholes rehabilitated in Bugiri [and] Namayingo districts, thus enhancing access to safe, clean, water for over 150,000 community members’, GOAL Uganda said in the tweet.
‘This was made possible through the support of Water User Committees (WUC) with funding from [Irish Aid], [Jimmy Deenihan], [GOAL Global]’.
In most of Uganda’s rural communities, water supply is not only inadequate but also highly contaminated.
According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), nearly 90 percent of Uganda’s population live in rural areas, and roughly two thirds of them lack access to safe water.
Data from Water For People also puts rural access to basic water services in Uganda at 41 percent. These huge gaps in drinking water services informed Lifewater’s declaration of a water crisis in the country in 2020.
Uganda has a lot of open water bodies and swampland. Therefore, most people in rural areas draw their drinking water mainly from surface sources such as ponds, rivers and lakes.
Water School however noted in its water crisis report that the abovementioned sources are often watering holes for livestock, downhill from latrines, and catchments for mudslide debris. These pollutants are widely known to be dangerous contaminants that contribute to life-threatening illnesses such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and hepatitis.
Lack of access to clean water is a huge threat to public health and ensuring that households have sufficient access to safe water is paramount to preventing water-related diseases and keeping children in school.
The Ugandan government has revealed an ambitious goal of reaching everyone in the country with clean water by 2040.
It plans to reach this goal by investing in quality water infrastructures, which involves restoring and maintaining clean water sources as well as promoting hygiene and investing in sanitation facilities.
Photo source: GOAL Uganda
