Students provide potable water for Agyementi

THREE students from the United States of America have sunk a borehole for the residents of Agyementi, a small community near Aburi in the Eastern Region.
The facility has come to solve the acute shortage of potable water that had forced the people to depend on unwholesome water from river that has been the community’s source of drinking water for years.
The students, Mr Darryl Finkton and Ndubuise Okereke, both Americans and Mr Sangu Delle, a Ghanaian, are in the country to provide social services for the community through a project known as the Africa Development Initiative Project of which they are co-directors.
Briefing the Daily Graphic at Aburi, Mr Delle said as part of activities marking this year’s United Nations Year of Clean Water, the group saw the need to assist the community by providing them with a borehole to enable them to get access to good drinking water.
According to him, the group was in the country to conduct a study into communities that lacked potable water, and that officials of the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing recommended Agyementi to them.
He explained that in addition to the provision of a borehole, the project was also training residents with a $1,700 fund to improve the sanitation situation in the area.
Mr Delle said the Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had formed a partnership with the people of the area to assist them with an innovative approach to development.
He stated that the only river the residents depended on was unwholesome for consumption and that when it was tested, it contained an e-coli bacteria, which had contributed to the high infant mortality in the area.
Mr Delle said the group was collaborating with some non-governmental organisations such as the Water Aid Ghana and the Akuapem Development Programme (ADEP), as well as the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, to sustain the initiative.
He indicated that to maintain the facility, the residents had on their own volition set up a committee to see to the maintenance of the pump attached to the borehole.
Mr Delle stated that the project was currently helping about 25 households who would be engaged in a one-year training in sanitation, coupled with a hygienic promotion programme at the household and community levels.
“My colleagues and I would periodically visit this community for further study to identify what the needs of the people really are,” Mr Delle stressed.