Thirst is upon us

| Wednesday August 13, 2014 12:47

As the anticipated rains delayed, only coming early this year, water rationing was applied because there was a risk of the dams completely drying up. Even with the late rains, the water levels peaked in the northern part of the country, whilst in the southern region, levels remained very low. So, we are not out of the woods yet.

We are a desert country and we have no choice but to adapt. This means, every citizen must make sure to play their part in preserving water; that can be achieved through monitoring the amount of water we are using as individual. 

With summer fast approaching, and the high temperatures that accompany it, water consumption is going to be high.

We must make sure that we monitor how much water our children use for bathing since they do not appreciate the situation we are talking about; how many times we flush our water closets, and we should have containers for recycling used water. One expert said last year that a huge amount of water in Botswana is wasted in flushing toilet paper. That is very true. Some people can’t appreciate the cost that comes with using a whole bucket to flush urine. If we could all desist from this practice, millions of liters of water would be saved.

However, we cannot talk about water conservation and leave out the Water Utilities Corporation. This corporation, the custodian of our water, is not doing enough to address leaking pipes. A few weeks ago, at a commissioning ceremony for Malwelwe water treatment plant in Molepolole, the Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources Kitso Mokaila was told that WUC is not coping with leaking pipes because of insufficient manpower. We still believe that this is the dumbest excuse to ever be given by an organisation the size of WUC.

First and foremost, the core business of WUC is to distribute water, and therefore one would expect it to be preoccupied with saving this scarce resource,  not letting it go to waste. WUC should cut down on its administrative staff and beef up field workers whose mandate will be to save the millions of liters of water in man-made lakes across the country.

Lastly, it is still our position that upon taking over from Water Affairs, WUC committed a serious blunder by shutting down numerous boreholes across the country on the grounds that maintaining them was costly.  We urge WUC to reopen those boreholes and let us drink water.

                                                                 Today’s thought

                                  “The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over water.”

 

                                             - Ismail Serageldin, World Bank Vice President for

                                                Environmental Affairs, quoted in Marq de Villiers’

                                                                      Water, 2000