The people of Ninting in the Ashanti region have almost lost any hope of a state intervention toward addressing their acute water supply problem that is causing serious health and socio-economic challenges to them.
The town to ascertain the severity of the issue reports that, the residents are, Indeed, faced with water borne diseases, poor school attendants with no option than to avoid the W.H.O’s regular hand washing with soap under running water advisory as a result of the acute potable water supply situation they have been battling for sometime now, despite several appeals and unfulfilled assurances by state agencies.
This is Ninting, a town that is located immediately after the famous Mampong Scarp from the Kumasi direction of the Kumasi-Ejura road.
It is four kilometres to Asante Mampong in the Mampong Municipality of the Ashanti region. Ninting is inhabited by more than one thousand 500 people whose main occupation is crop farming.
Ninting has been famous across Ghana for the production of banana and the cure for Stroke disease which used to attract people from all walks of life to the community.
However, the popular banana which was the major trading and economic maintain of the town has given way to the sale of variety of fruits whichever comes in season as well as food stuffs which the women folks of the town now sell to commuters in transit along the stretch of the highway for income.
CHALLENGES:
Apart from the lack of any other meaningful sustainable employment opportunities to keep especially the youth busy to earn decent living, the chiefs and people of Ninting have one major concern which is causing serious health and other socio-economic difficulties for them.
And this is about the sorry state of the potable water supply sources. Ninting has a rocky and uneven topography rendering the water table very low.
Since time immemorial, the community has relied mainly on water from rocks for drinking and all other activities including house chores.
But for sometime now, factors including the climate change phenominon, have caused a reduction in the inflow of water for collection.
The community has been depending on two main such water bodies-Ameselae and Nintinmu(pronounced as in inside Ninting)where the residents walk considerable distances through bush to fetch water for their routine activities.
Various households have also resorted to harvesting rain water in their homes for domestic purposes.
A visit to these water supply sources revealed a sorry state of the present condition of the two sources.
At Ameselae, it was observed that a shallow round hole had been dug on the rocky surface to create a small pool of water from two different tributaries under a sloppy landscape with a canopy of plants serving as shade for protection.
The inflow is in bits and pieces for which the patrons need time and patience to fill their containers.
Two people can scoop the water from the algae-ridden round hole at a time.
First time visitors to the waterside would right away notice that the source is not safe for human consumption without treatment as a result of an unhygienic environment including algae that is harmful to humans.
Sisters Abena Antwiwaa and Grace Agyen, who spoke to GBC News said apart from the waking up at ungodly hours and walking through the bush before getting water for the house on daily basis, they also have dangerous reptiles to contend with sometimes while trying to fetch water.
They said most of the times too, they have to commute to nearby towns such as Asante Mampong to buy pipe borne water, a situation that is expensive to sustain.
Kwabena Duku, another patron of the water source, noted that rain water runoff from the sloppy land directly into the water source has also been a major challenge lamenting that the people are fed up with the water problems.
TOUR:
GBC News traveled with the Head of the Ninting Bretuo
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