---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Kripa Basnyat" <kbasnyat@pwescr.org>
Date: Dec 17, 2013 10:22 AM
Subject: (Womens ESCR) Severe water shortages in Malawi
To: <womenescr@googlegroups.com>

Severe water shortages in Malawi

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

Taps have run dry in many rural areas

RUMPHI, 12 December 2013 (IRIN) - Parts of Malawi, including large parts of the northern region, have not received rain since February 2013 and are now experiencing severe water shortages. Women in the affected areas are leaving their homes in the early hours of the morning and walking up to 40 minutes to fetch water from the closest source.
 
"One will have to be up and on their way to the nearest borehole by midnight if she is to be in a position to get water, because by that time several other people will already have lined up for the same," said Lucky Chadewa, who lives in Chikwawa in northern Malawi's Rumphi district.
 
The water table has dropped as the rainless days have continued and boreholes yield less water or even dry up. The women wait for them to refill rather than return home empty-handed. "It is totally just by luck that one gets… [any] these days because after filling just a few buckets, the borehole stops producing water," Chadewa told IRIN. 
 
Women often leave their buckets in the queue at the borehole and rush back home so they can get their children ready for school. But when they return they find that their buckets have been pushed to the back of the queue and they may spend the rest of the day waiting to fill them.

Erratic rains
 
In its latest update, the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) - composed of the government, UN agencies and NGOs - has identified 24 districts across the country that are experiencing critical food shortages as a result of erratic rains. Rumphi is one of three such districts in the northern region. The MVAC update estimates that 1.85 million people will need food assistance until the next expected harvest, in March 2014. 
 
In Rumphi, Karonga and Mzimba districts the rainy season, which normally extends into May or June, got off to a late start and ended in February. "By the time the rains stopped in the affected areas, the amount of water that had penetrated the ground was definitely not enough to either maintain the water table or raise it. This is why the boreholes are not giving the right amount of water," Mahara Nyirenda, a climate change expert with the Development Fundof Norway, told IRIN.
 
A traditional leader in Chadewa's area, Group Village Headman (GVH) "Phete" Oscar Zungwara Gondwe, said nearby rivers and taps connected to the Nkhamanga rural water supply project, a gravity-fed water supply system, had also dried up some time ago.
 

"If you delay in waking up and getting to the borehole, just forget about water on that day"

Tiwonge Moyo, a resident of Euthini in the western side of Mzimba district, said the women in her area were also leaving home very early in the morning to reach the local borehole before it ran dry. "If you delay in waking up and getting to the borehole, just forget about water on that day," she told IRIN. 
 
She said the river beds that women normally dig into to reach water during the dry season had also stopped yielding any. "This is the first time that we are literally getting no supply from these streams. It is dry sand wherever you can dig."

 

Link: http://www.irinnews.org/report/99315/severe-water-shortages-in-malawi

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