Megbedzrekope water crisis to end December
The age-old water crisis facing residents of Megbedzrekope, a small scattered and rural farming community near Aveyime in the North Tongu District of the Volta Region, is to be addressed to bring relief to the people.
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This follows an ongoing intervention by the Rural Urban Partnership for Africa (RUPFA), an Accra-based social non-governmental organisation (NGO), which has begun laying pipelines from a nearby water source to the community.
The only sources of water that the over 300 inhabitants of the community have depended on for more than five decades are ponds around the community during the rainy season and the Volta Lake, which is almost three miles away.
The situation forced many of the community’s residents, who are peasant farmers to migrate to Ashaiman, Tema and other areas.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic during a visit to Megbedzrekope, the Executive Director of RUPFA, Mr Richard Ashaley, stated that the NGO would also construct a standpipe in the community from where the residents would fetch clean water for their use.
According to him, his outfit would hold further discussions with members of the community and some stakeholders of the area to revamp an earlier water project which had stalled for four years due to lack of funding.
Water Project
The water project was abandoned after tests and analysis carried out on the community’s water source in June, 2011 with the help of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which revealed that the water contained micro-organisms that were not good for human consumption.
Following appeals by the residents, Mr Ashaley said his outfit decided to intervene in order to alleviate their plight. He announced that with the resumption of work on the project, the community would get good drinking water by the end of the year.
The Assembly Member for the Aveyime Central Electoral Area, Mr Samuel Nyamedi, described the predicament of the residents of Megbedzrekope as very pathetic, and added that the need to address their water situation could not be overemphasised.
Headache of the Assembly
He observed that the community’s water problem had been a headache for him and other concerned citizens of the area for a long time. Mr Nyamedi said the completion of the project would turn around the economic and social fortunes of the people.
The Area Co-ordinator of RUPFA, Mr Prince Kisseih, noted that on completion, the project would benefit sister communities such as Kweteykope, Abukope and Dzarankor which had also been in a similar situation for several decades.
According to him, the water would be drawn from the Water and Sanitation Services Treatment Centre at Aveyime.