After
Ebola, Sierra Leone Government Decides to Provide Schools with Water
The Sierra Leone Government has
decided to provide schools with water and sanitation facilities before
they reopen, following the now-seven month shutdown due to the Ebola
oubreak. At top-level State House consultative meetings on January 21
and February 2, officials from the Ministries of Education, Science and
Technology (MEST) and Water Resources made the commitment. The deputy
Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji Foday Bayoh, unveiled a programme
called "Washing Schools" to provide water and sanitation facilities to
educational institutions.
Exactly how the government plans to provide the hundreds of
primary, JSS and
SSS schools around the country with water is unclear. The Guma Valley
Water Company serves the capital and neighbouring areas of the Western
Area only, and has been plagued in recent years by water shortages. A
few of the district capitals have erratic pipe borne water supply, but
most of the country relies on wells, rivers and streams for their water
supply. Much of this water is unsafe to drink. There has been talk of
providing boreholes to institutions around the country, but these are
expensive to drll and, given the numbers involved, would require
substantial time to complete. Boreholes are reputed to provide
better-quality water than wells, but are dug to much greater depths and
use more sophisticated technology.
During the seven-year tenure of the government leading up to the
Ebola
crisis there was little indication that provision of water to schools
was a priority (read Prince
of Wales School, Symbol of a Dysfunctional System). Millions of
dollars were spent on hastily
conceived four-lane road projects (read natinpasadvantage)
and millions more were
committed
by executive fiat to solar projects and a grand new airport at Mammamah
(read Do
We Really Need a New Airport at Mammamah), but there was little
mention of provision of water for schools.
Until Ebola. Meanwhile, even as the government attempts to fulfil this
new commitment, there are similarly hundreds of health centers around
the country without pipe borne water, along with hundreds if not
thousands of villages and towns.