(ERGO) – A severe water crisis in coastal Banderbeyla, Puntland’s Bari region, is forcing low-income families to drink contaminated salty water that is causing children and others to fall sick.

The price of a barrel of fresh water soared to $5 from $1.50 in April, when the town’s only borehole system broke down – solar panels, pumps, and pipes failed and haven’t been repaired.

Nadifo Osman Yusuf ’s family of 15 are forced to drink salty water. She and her two daughters manage to collect 40 litres a day from a hand-dug well a long walk away near the coast.

“The whole town is thirsty – we can’t find drinking water. We are suffering a lot. Walking to the well takes us an hour and the water we fetch causes problems because it is not clean. Our shoulders and backs hurt and it takes us three hours waiting at the well to get this water,” Nadifo complained.

Water tankers supplying fresh water to the town do not offer credit. She has no cash to buy it for her young children and elderly mother.

Earlier in June, two of her children were hospitalised with stomach pain, diarrhoea, and vomiting. Doctors said the illnesses were caused by the poor quality of the water.

“The children are coughing and have diarrhoea from the contaminated water we got from the well. I carried one of the children in serious condition on my back to the hospital as we had no transport. He was treated with pills, ORS, and injections. I stayed with him for seven days in the hospital and now he is better,” she explained.

Nadifo earns a paltry income from odd laundry jobs in town. For the past two months, she has not been able to give her children even one daily meal consistently.

Banderbeyla’s economy is at a low ebb, with the impact of prolonged drought and the current stormy ocean conditions that limit fishing activities and shrink livelihoods.

Nadifo had been relying on cleaning jobs earning $3 to $5 a day, but now she is lucky to make even two dollars. The shop where she used to buy on credit cut off her account when her debt reached $350. Her family now survives on small aid sent occasionally by relatives in Bossaso.

“This year is the worst. The children are crying from hunger; there is no work. Poverty came because of the sea – there is no daily income from fishing now. And I am a mother who stays at home – I have no assets. I cook what I beg from kind people,” Nadifo said.

Five of her children have stopped school because she cannot cover the $50 monthly fees for regular and Koranic classes. Her family has lived off fishing for many years. Her husband, a fisherman, is unable to earn a living after sustaining a back injury last year.

A local grandmother, Sahra Hanaf Kulan, is raising five children alone. She knows the water she fetches is unsafe for drinking, but she had nothing else to offer the children. She can’t even access firewood or charcoal to boil it.

“The water is far from where I live, and we have to carry it on our backs. I buy a 20-litre jerrycan but sometimes I can’t carry the water because I am sick. I think it might be tuberculosis; I got it from carrying heavy loads of water on my back. My lower ribs hurt from carrying jerrycans, and the children are hungry and crying. There is no government helping us. No one is helping us,” Sahra said.

For the past week, she hasn’t once lit a fire to cook a meal. She can’t take on manual work and has no one else to assist her. Her only son died suddenly last December, leaving her to care for his five children. The children’s unmet needs cause her to cry often.

The last aid she received was a month ago when charitable individuals gave her a few kilograms of millet that lasted a week.

“What can I cook if I don’t have anything to use? Should I cook sand?” she exclaimed. “Neighbours sometimes share cooked food with us. Adults don’t eat; the children go to sleep hungry and cry a lot. We haven’t received anything in a while. I am asking for something for my children to eat.”

The children are not in school and they have no relatives in the area to turn to for help.

“Their father used to go out to fish when the sea was good, earning a daily income. He bought flour, rice, sugar, oil, dates, and pasta. Their father used to work but now he is dead and no one is working for the children now,” she said.

A local doctor warned radio listeners that drinking salty water could cause watery diarrhoea, typhoid and other health risks. Boiling may kill bacteria, viruses and worms, but did not remove salt and other harmful dissolved solids.

Local officials in Banderbeyla say complaints have been sent to the Puntland administration and the company that built the borehole system, but so far they haven’t had any response.

Source: Ergo