The severe water shortage that has hit Nsawam and its environs has taken a toll on the health and academic work of schoolchildren in the affected communities.
As a result of the problem, some children have developed skin rashes, since they depend on streams and boreholes which have become contaminated.
The situation has, therefore, compelled students from the affected communities to appeal to the government to supply schools in the catchment area with water until the problem is resolved.
During a visit to the Nsawam township, some schoolchildren and a school authority the Junior Graphic spoke to said day students had regularly missed early morning classes as a result of the water shortage.
At the St. Martin’s Senior High School at Adoagyiri, Master Edmund Narh Amegatcher, a day student, said the situation was the worst water shortage they had experienced in the area in recent years.
He said for the first time he had been consistently reporting to school late because of the water shortage.
“Other day students have also been coming to school very late since the problem started. Classes start at 7.45 a.m., but because we have to go in search of water daily, we sometimes report to school as late as 9:30 a.m., thereby missing the first lesson regularly,” Master Amegatcher added.
Some children in the area, he said, ignored the danger of drinking the polluted water because they could not afford to buy sachet water due to its recent price hike, adding that such children ended up with stomach upsets.
For her part, Ms Berenice Abugre, a boarder at St Martin’s SHS, indicated that some students who had developed skin rashes as a result of using water from the borehole and streams to bath reported at the school infirmary for medical care while others brought their own medication from home to apply on the affected parts of their bodies.
She said the main challenge the water shortage posed to them now as boarders was the fact that the school’s toilet which have water closets (W/C) had been closed. They, therefore, use the school’s KVIP which to her generates a lot of heat.
Master Kutordzor Dodzi from the Nsawam Senior High School said the shortage of water had affected their school work.
According to him, he normally woke up at dawn to study; however, because of the water shortage, he had been compelled to use that time to go in search of water.
“I wake up at 3:30 a.m. to search for water ever since the problem started. Although it is scary around that hour, that is the only way to avoid the long queues that are usually formed,” he said.
He said he normally went to school on Saturdays to participate in group discussions; however, ever since the problem started he was unable to do that and instead went to the Densu River to wash his clothes.
The Assistant Headmistress (Administration) of the St Martin’s SHS, Ms Georgina Akoto-Nsiah, said currently the situation in the school was getting better the school was receiving regular supply of water from the Chief of Staff, who is an old student, the National Security Coordinator and also from two of the school’s boreholes that had been mechanised by some other old students of the school.
