A typhoid epidemic has returned but the taps installed 15 years ago still can’t provide drinking water to the residents of Kinshasa’s crowded Kimbanseke area.
Their plight and that of millions of others worldwide is the focus of the United Nations World Water Day on Tuesday.
”We have lived in an awful situation since the beginning of the 1990’s. Water stopped flowing in our taps several months after they installed the pipes,” said Thierry (26).
The electronics student from Ngandu, a suburb of Kimbanseke, said ”nothing has been done since” by the local water authority known as Regideso.
In Kinshasa, where humidity reaches more than 90% during the rainy season from November to May, there is a major deficiency of drinking water for the six million people who live in the capital.
”In 1984 Regideso distributed 400 000 cubic metres of water per day. Since then the population has increased by about one million people but the amount of water being distributed hasn’t changed,” said Philippe Havet, responsible for emergency programmes for Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders — MSF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In the poor areas on the outskirts of the city, such as Kimbanseke, the cuts in water supply are frequent and the pressure is often inadequate.
”In Kimbanseke where the houses are situated on slightly higher ground, the water doesn’t make it to the houses,” Havet said.
This failure in an essential public service has forced people to adapt by digging wells, making illegal water connections and collecting rain water. The residents of the outer suburb of Ngandu have to make long trips on foot to get drinking water, sometimes at night, to areas on the main water pipeline connecting the airport, where 25 litres of water is sold for 40 Congolese francs (10 US cents), explained Nzumba, a mother of seven children.
In Mfumu Nketo, another suburb of Kimbanseke, women and children were crowded around the private wells.
In front of ”his” well, Apollo, a young man in his twenties, fills water containers all day for a price of 10 francs for 10 litres.
”It’s my only source of money. I wake up here and I leave after everyone has gone,” he said.
But with the first thunderstorm, the poorly protected wells fill with dirty water carrying all the household waste and rubbish from the surrounding homes.
At the end of 2004, the consumption of contaminated water led to an outbreak of typhoid which killed several hundred people in Kinshasa.
Typhoid has reappeared in Kimbanseke, but the water from the local authority has not, so MSF has launched a campaign of water distribution in six suburbs of this poverty stricken area.
”From the beginning of February to mid-March, we have distributed 3,15-million litres in these suburbs, with the objective of stopping the epidemic,” Havet explained.
The typhoid has retreated but cases of diarrhea and skin infections remain high, according to the inhabitants, who demand the government take action. ‒ Sapa-AFP