When people are left high and dry
Villagers on Pulau Banggi are now in full crisis mode, trying to find water amid the drought.
PHOTOGRAPHS emerging from drought-hit Pulau Banggi, Malaysia’s largest island, are heart wrenching. They include:
> A man pumping water from a 3sq m well into a blue tank on a truck. In the background is a hanging bridge. The well was freshly dug from the dried up Pengkalan Darat river.
> Two children collecting water from a drain in Kampung Batu Layar. It is where animals like cattle come to drink.
> Villagers collecting treated water from a water depot in Karakit, Banggi’s administrative centre. Each family is limited to 100 litres.
Pulau Banggi, the size of Singapore, is on the northernmost tip of Sabah. The 447sq km island has a population of 20,000, living in 18 villages.
Since the end of January, the prolonged El Niño-induced dry spell has hit the island.
Last week, the water crisis in Pulau Banggi went from bad to critical. On April 8, the sole water treatment plant on the island, that was pumping at 30% of its full capacity of two million litres daily, stopped operations. Its source of water, Sungai Pengkalan Darat, had dried up.
On Wednesday, The Star reported that 75% of the islanders were seriously affected by the dry spell.Two weeks ago, I wrote about Albert Adampai, a 43-year-old Sidang Injil Borneo pastor who has been living for two years on the island where water is a scarce commodity.
Before the drought, in a fortnight, the pastor collected 900 litres of piped water, from his friend’s house about 4km away, for drinking and cooking. Every week, he also collected 900 litres of water from a nearby stream for bathing, washing clothes and dishes, and flushing the toilet.
When his water supplies dried up, he had to source the commodity from the water treatment plant in Karakit town, about 15km from his one-bedroom, wooden home in Kampung Limbuak Darat.
When the plant stopped processing water, Pastor Albert had to collect water from a well, dug in the dried-up Sungai Pengkalan Darat. The well is about 200m from the dam that supplied water to the water processing plant.
“On Friday for one hour, Ah Ming, a 50-something contractor, used his Hitachi excavator to dig the 3sq m, 2m-deep well,” Pastor Albert told me on Thursday in a phone interview. “He did it for free as those getting water from the plant needed another source.”
The water from the well is clear. “There is no 100% guarantee that the water is clean as it is not treated water,” he said.
Since Monday, the pastor had made nine trips to the well to supply water to nine villagers, including himself. On each trip, he collected about 900 litres of water and transported it to families in Kampung Limbuak Darat and Kampung Batu Layar, about 15km from Karakit.
Pastor Albert did not collect from the 30,000 litres of potable treated water that the Government sent from Kudat, a mainland town about a 90-minute ferry ride, to Karakit on Tuesday.
“You are only allowed to take 100 litres in one day. That’s five gallons (a 20-litre plastic container). I’d be wasting diesel if I only collected that amount,” he said.
The Government also sent some 1,300 boxes of bottled water to the islanders, who have been begging for help for the last two weeks. The limited supply was distributed to the hospital and some villages.
The lucky, selected villagers each received a carton of 1.5-litre bottles of water.
“My friend who has a family of six received a carton containing 12 bottles. The bottled water lasted them for three days. Now they have to find water, however far it is and however hard it is,” he said.
Since March 23, Beyond Pitas, a non-governmental organisation, has highlighted the villagers’ plight through a series of tweets using the hashtag #BanggiWaterCrisis. It hopes to help them by sending bottled water urgently and finding a permanent solution to the water woes.
A heart-warming photograph to emerge from Pulau Banggi is a Beyond Pitas’ tweet showing 350 cartons of bottled water in a warehouse in Kudat. The money to buy the precious commodity came from a group of anonymous donors who only wanted to be known as the Servants of God.
Comments
Post a Comment