Rundu — Villagers at Mayara in Mukwe constituency in the Kavango East region are pleading with the authorities to attend to their water needs, as currently three of their boreholes are out of order after pumps were stolen and/or broken by thieves on the night of 4 June.
"We engaged the police, the councillor's office and the department of rural water supply but all were in vain, no response has been communicated," said Edmund Namuthinda, the Mayara village development committee (VDC) chairperson.
"The village is spread over a distance of 10 km radius from east to west and has 9 sub-villages within it," he said.
Namuthinda said they are now in a predicament as they now walk 4 to 5 km to and from the river to fetch water and some walk to a borehole at the Meatco quarantine facility along the Trans Caprivi Highway, which is five kilometres away from they live. The village has a combined school and a clinic that depends on one of the affected boreholes.
The village is also being terrorised by marauding elephants for the past two months.
"The crocodiles are also a lot here but we have to risk it. We engaged the environment officials but they aren't attending to us including the councillor. Our area has a lot of pensioners and we have a lot of kids who walk that distance for water. There is a slow borehole where people queue up all day for water but it is very slow. If you go there in the morning, you come back in the late afternoon," he said.
Namuthinda, along with fellow VDC members, wrote letters to relevant offices but have not received a response yet.
"We believe it is crucial that immediate action should be taken to alleviate the challenges we are facing due to limited water access and the overcrowding of one of the available water sources for which our community is one of the largest communities in Mukwe," the VDC chair said.
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The VDC has requested to meet relevant authorities including the Mukwe constituency councillor Damian Maghambayi to discuss the matter further and explore potential solutions.
Maghambayi said: "It's not that I don't want to go to them, they are my people. I was also born there, and when the theft happened, I was informed and immediately reported it to the police to go and investigate."
"I also engaged the rural water supply on what happened for them to attend to the situation promptly. Rural water supply reacted that they will attend to it as there are funds available, they are busy procuring."
Maghambayi further noted that there is a need to engage contractors and their workers who have been contracted to install and repair boreholes in various areas as the theft appears to be done by professionals.
He suspects that some of the people installing boreholes have been recruited to steal them.
