Stakeholders have been urged to come up with a water financing program where citizens can access credit to procure water storage equipment and reduce the water crisis in the country.
Water sanitation and hygiene programme technical lead for World Vision Kenya Peter Karanja said that access to credit for Kenyans to get water tanks or dig small dams will help a long way in ensuring that they have water for use in dry seasons.
Karanja who was speaking in Maralal town, Samburu West said that harvesting runaway rainwater will not only save Kenyans from water shortage but also from the havoc caused by flooding, especially in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands regions in the country.
“The government, non-governmental organizations, microfinance facilities and water stakeholders have a critical role to play in reducing water crisis, especially in areas where access to clean and safe water remains a challenge,” he said.
He added:
“The government and all stakeholders in the sector can come up with microfinance that can support people just to go and procure tanks for rainwater harvesting and can use the water during dry seasons.”
“People can use the harvested water for economic development; have kitchen gardens for small-scale irrigation, improve their nutrition and this will take the ASAL areas in the country out of water crisis.”
The water expert further argues that there is a need to improve access to water and its quality with respect to the population by exploring groundwater.
“Rather than waiting for the insufficient rains for three years, how well can we do groundwater exploration so that Kenyans can have uninterrupted access to safe water?” he posed.
“Not all groundwater is of good quality. However, water technologies have been put in place to ensure that once explored and the water quality is discovered not fit, we can make technological interventions to convert the water to be safe for consumption,” he said.
Hazel Lametayan from Ngatereroi said for a long time, women and girls from the village have been forced to endure long and strenuous journeys of up to 12km in search of water from neighbouring villages.
He said having water storage equipment will ease their suffering.
“It feels bad to see a lot of water going to waste. If we had big storage tanks, water would have been stored and used for a long period,” she said.
