Succour Underway For Gombe Communities With Acute Water Scarcity

Reprieve is underway for residents of Gombe State who have for years been grappling with acute water scarcity as the state government‘s new water booster stations are set to commence operations.

LEADERSHIP learnt that many parts of the state experience difficulties in getting water for consumption and house chores due to desertification and sandy nature of soil in the state that made wells and boreholes construction hard.

It was also observed that the Gombe State Water Board responsible for supplying water to the residents only reaches a few areas in the metropolis while other places rely on vendors who sell at high costs.

The vendors, LEADERSHIP reports, sell water in trucks and carts to the people with a medium size tank filled with water at N4,000 while a drum costs N1,000 respectively.

In some areas such as Tumfure, Labour Quarters, Investment Quarters, Kasuwar Gwari, NTA Area, Wuro Bobbo, Wuro Bawa etc, the situation is worse as they do not have access to supply by the water board even as no water pipes were provided in the areas.

Our correspondent report that there are some local governments where vendors do not even reach and they have to trek long distances to fetch water.

Some of the places include Lawanti, Malam Jamo, Gama Dadi in Akko local government and communities in Dukku local government area respectively.

A resident of Wuro Bobbo in Tumfure, Malam Muhammadu Na‘ibi, lamented that they usually fetch water from ponds and streams because they cannot afford to buy from vendors who supply in tanks.

However, in an interview with LEADERSHIP, the state commissioner for water resources, Mohammed Fawu explained that the state water board could at present supply water to 250,000 residents within the state capital adding that pipes from Dadin Kowa Dam, where water board sources water from is 50 kilometres from Gombe town.

He said there are not less than one million people at the moment that need water supply from the board.

 Fawu said the state government as part of efforts to improve the supply, provides new water booster stations under its regional water upgrade project in order to supply to other areas not covered by the water board.

According to him, the places worst affected by the water shortage such as Tumfure would start getting water from a new booster station established at the bye pass road in the state capital in the next three weeks.