UER: Drought in Nyangolingo community affects education and healthcare delivery

The Nyangolingo community in the Kassena Nankana West District of the Upper East Region is currently experiencing acute drought with all the water sources dried up, making life unbearable for residents.

Rev. Fr. Anthony Afriyie Amponsah of the LENTWITHJESUS fame, through his annual visit to the North expressed worry over the plight of the residents and his appealing for water supply to the area.

Nyangolingo is found in the western part of Kassena Nankana West District in the Upper East Region with a population of close to 7,000 people and a population of about 4000 livestock and domestic birds.

Access to water sources in this community is unavailable and the only dam which provides water for domestic and animal usages gets dried immediately after the rainy season.

Animals like sheep, goats, pigs and cattle only rely on the dam to quench their thirst, but unfortunately during the dry season, getting water from the dam is difficult.

LENTWITHJESUS, a Catholic oriented organisation, sets out to look extensively at this sad situation seeking support to help this community.

This is how women in Nyangolingo struggle to fetch water at one of the few boreholes situated at a populated zone within the community. The water table of this borehole is very low, thus making manual pumping very difficult.

In Ghana 3.9 million people do not have clean water close to homes – That’s 1 in 5 of the population.

Here in Nyangolingo, the water business by middlemen is very lucrative due to the water crisis. Water entrepreneurs use tricycle cargo bikes to haulage water from far to reach communities to Nyangolingo for a fee.

The water situation is adversely affecting education especially, the girl child who spends hours in search of water before being ready for school.

The queen mother of Nyangolingo Pognaba Hellen Akuribia Adumpoka said the water situation is affecting her women both physically and mentally because the household activities rest on the shoulders of the women and water plays a major role in their daily activities.

“Water is our major challenge and it is adversely affecting my women. Their husbands usually complain of their wives spending much time looking for water. We are begging all and sundry to come to our aid,” she appealed.

Nelson Nyabaa, a community leader explains the importance of dry season farming to the youth and migration to the South for greener pastures and that if the community gets irrigation facilities and all year round water source, youth migration will minimize.

The Assembly man of Nyangolingo said several letters were written to the Assembly for support in the area of water, but the request is still not successful.

He therefore appealed for support from the government and other organizations.

In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that 2 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water.

The post UER: Drought in Nyangolingo community affects education and healthcare delivery first appeared on 3News.

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