LIBERIA: Most Liberians still have little access to regular water and electricity supply

Record ID: 228621

  • Title: LIBERIA: Most Liberians still have little access to regular water and electricity supply
  • Date: 5th June 2007
  • Summary: (AD1) MONROVIA, LIBERIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) (NIGHT SHOTS) VARIOUS OF MAN STARTING HIS GENERATOR AT HOME
  • Embargoed: 20th June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Liberia
  • Country: Liberia
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA1MY6D90AEJPCZZOGI7IN5BOXZ
  • Story Text: The sight of women and children crowded around a water point is a common sight in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.
    Hundreds of water sellers make an income by ferrying water in containers to the many parts of the city where there are no public taps.
    Liberia's water and electricity supplies were destroyed by looters during the brutal 14-year civil war that devastated the country's infrastructure.
    The war has been over for four years now, but water is still an expensive commodity in a country where the average person lives on just over 130 US dollars a year.
    "How are you calling them now, gallons, but three tins, they're selling them for five Liberian dollars, and if you don't have five dollars, you don't have water to take bath, so you have to refer to your waste water, or reserve, or just wait until you get money," said Nathan Horace Junior, who looks after a family of 10.
    Horace Junior is luckier than most because he lives just around the corner from a water point. But he also remembers what things were like before the war.
    "We want to go back to pre-war status, where you get up in the morning, you open your shower, take a bath when you come home instead of using other water when you come home, you throw water in the bucket, when you can see it's fuzzy, I never had to do that before. But we know there was a war, so we hope that in the future, this, the water system would develop, and will be better off than what it is now," Horace Junior said.
    President Johnson-Sirleaf's promises to restore water and electricity to Monrovia have proved difficult for her to keep. In July 2006 safe drinking water points were installed across the city, but there are still massive challenges ahead like providing running water to the city's main hospitals, schools and businesses, and re-installing a general network to supply the rest of the population.
    "We need the electricity to increase the production of water. So some of the new units that came in are now at the water system in the right place, increasing the water supply to the city, and that also happens to concomitantly give water while we're also giving electricity," said Joseph Boakai, Liberia's Vice President.
    Generator-powered street lights were also installed along one of Monrovia's main streets in July 2006 with the aid of Ghana's government, who provided the electricity poles and technicians to install them.
    But generators are an expensive and limited solution. Setting up a national grid is a huge challenge for a government with an annual budget of just around 129 million US dollars. Boakai says money is not the only problem.
    "You have to repair all of the broken pipes, you have to put new poles up, you have to put up transformers, you have to do a number of things, I mean and you know, that takes some time, that takes some expertise, we don't have the number of people, capable people, to do this work," Boakai said.
    In the meantime most households rely on generators.
    "The gas is so expensive, that we can't buy it every night. The day we get money we buy gas. We don't have money every day to buy gas, so the day we don't put the generator on, the whole area can be dark," said Eileen Kaba, who lives in Monrovia.
    It costs her family about six dollars per day to run their generator and they can afford to do so two or three times a week.
    The lack of electricity is also a threat to security in a country where rape is rampant.
    "When we go buy bread, there's no current, so the place is dark. So we can't even go there, so we come back to our house to look for a flashlight to go and buy the bread," continues Kaba, who looks after a family of eight.
    Kaba and her neighbours have not had electricity for over 15 years. But they have done their best to work and live around their many problems; in the evenings residents socialise around small generator-lit shops, another testament to the resilience of Liberia's people.
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