NAIROBI: The need for safe drinking water cannot be over-emphasised. While presiding over the opening of the 18th Africa Water Association International Congress and Exhibition in Nairobi yesterday, President Uhuru Kenyatta said nearly half of Kenyans have access to clean water. This figure is lamentably low.
Granted, larger parts of Kenya are classified as arid and semi-arid, making water a scarce resource, with only 1,000 cubic metres of water per capita of renewable fresh water resources. In this places, women and children spend up to half a day searching for water that might not even be clean. This undermines children's performance in school and means that womenfolk don't engage in any gainful activity for most of their lives.
If nothing else, the struggles these two groups go through each day, underline the need to make water available to all households. With a constant supply of clean drinking water, the womenfolk will devote their time to economic activity; pupils will devote more time to their studies and to a large extent, water-borne diseases like cholera, which kills, are averted.
Other than encouraging better use of water, another way of beating scarcity is to encourage the harvesting of rain water during the rainy season.
