By Arret Jatta
Residents of Bundung have raised urgent concerns about the water shortage in their community which they say has been the norm for over a decade now. Their concerns were echoed in the National Assembly chambers by the Parliamentarian for Bundungka Kunda, Hon Sulayman Jammeh who threatened to resign if the water shortage is not addressed in his community.
Speaking on the adjournment debate for the last session of the year 2022 which took place on Thursday 22nd December 2022, Hon Jammeh spoke passionately about the water shortage in his community which he described as the biggest challenge in Bundung.
“Since 2013 to date, even before that, the water shortage has been a problem. So a problem of water, if they cannot solve it I cannot see any seriousness about that,” said the former Councillor who contested to become a Hon member.
In his view “as far as I’m concerned, last time I said it here at our community level we were able to provide water but the service that we expected from the service provider that is NAWEC they are not giving it to us,” he said.
He added that based on the achievements they did for bundung “this water issue if it’s not addressed I think I will just resign as a Parliamentarian”.
Speaking to Gainako Online Newspaper after his deliberation, Hon Jammeh reaffirmed his decision that “ if the water issue in bundung is not addressed I will have to resign and I really mean it because I cannot do my own part by providing over 70 community standpipes and people are not getting the service from NAWEC”.
Our reporter spoke to some residents of Bundung who also raised similar concerns on the water shortage facing their community.
Nyima Gibba a housewife residing in Bundung described the difficulties which the water shortage puts them through. She explained that “the only time we are able to fetch water is in the night when people are supposed to be sleeping, we are busy fetching water because, in the day time, you rarely see the water from the taps”.
She called the daily experience “stressful” because they don’t get to enjoy their sleep, “you can’t even sleep comfortably in the night because you will have to wake up in the middle of the night to fetch water and this disrupts our sleep” she said.
“This is not our first complaint to the media, we have reported this several times but we still don’t see any positive changes regarding the water shortage in our area,” she said.
Another Bundung resident, Binta Jarju raised similar complaints noting that “sometimes if we overslept and didn’t wake up to fetch water, we end up looking for houses that have a water tank to fetch water from and the tanks don’t always have water”.
Binta questioned why other areas get to enjoy running water 24/7 but when it comes to Bundung, they are lagging behind.
“We need water in our daily activities because almost everything we do in the houses requires water, we can’t live without it and all these complaints should not be in vain,” said the Bundung Resident. She called on “the people responsible should do something for God’s sake, we are law-abiding citizens, we pay tax and it’s our right to access clean water because it’s not like we’re even begging for it, despite the water shortage we still pay water bills so it’s only fair they provide it,” she said.
Binta urged the authorities to act quickly to address the water shortage in Bundung. Expressing her frustration she exclaimed that “we are tired, we can’t continue to live like this, something has to be done”.
