(ERGO) – Around 1,000 drought-hit families in three areas in northern Buhodle are facing water scarcity after water deliveries from aid agencies stopped last month.
In Sool-joogto, where the wells have run dry after three years of drought, 600 families are now without water.
Water trucks take three hours to deliver water from Buhodle.
The Somali Red Crescent had been delivering water to these area from last November.
Omar Ahmed Abdullahi, 45, is living in Maygagle.
He came to the area because of the water deliveries.
Adan Warsame, 55, and his six children, the youngest aged two, have been using water they bought at the going rate of 180,000 shillings Ahmed and his family live in Go’ondale, 50 km north of Buhodle.
He does not know how long he can sustain this.
Despite the lack of water, some families in the area received food distributions of rice, flour, sugar and cooking oil from the UN’s World Food Programme.
Cooking without water has become a major challenge.

Speaking recently during a two-day water summit held in Naivasha, the Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, Simon Chelugui, said Kenya was keen to improve its water harvesting capabilities and curb wastage.
“We have a pendulum between floods and drought, but looking forward the new strategic plan of the ministry is to have a fair balance so we are looking at modern ways of conservation and storage,” Chelugui remarked at the summit which ended on Friday.
According to Engineer Daniel Ng’ang’a, the Water Services Providers Association’s Chairperson, up to 43 per cent of water generated in the country is either lost or unaccounted for, a situation that has hampered the development of better infrastructure owing to diminishing revenues.
“We have to understand that there’s need to rehabilitate networks to reduce wastage because most water services providers are using systems that were done before independence,” he said during the Kenya Water Summit.
“It is important to try and reduce the losses we have in our towns and that can only be done through the upgrade of infrastructure and ensure we have proper management in place,” Ng’ang’a said.
Ng’ang’a’s sentiments were echoed by Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi who chairs the Council of Governor’s Committee in charge of Water, Forestry, and Mining.
It is anchored in Vision 2030 and is key to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, he said.
Kenya has in the recent past been faced with an unprecedented drought that has affected 3.4 million people most of whom have limited access to clean drinking water.
Water scarcity in Nairobi has, for instance, led to the introduction of rationing program with the city’s water levels at dams supplying the capital with water reported to be sinking.
The national per capita water supply per annum also remains low standing at 647 cubic meters.

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The situation has worsened as the PHE Department has not been able to supply water in some areas for the last few days.
Though the PHE authorities had claimed that there are sufficient tube-wells to meet the water shortage in the areas, people are displeased with the scarcity of water.
“For the last 10-15 days, we have been waiting for resumption of water supply, which had suddenly stopped.
We asked the employees of PHE Department, which supplies water to the area, about the issue, but they could not resolve our problem,” said a resident of Dool.
The ground water level has decreased to a great extent as a majority of the households have dug bore-wells.” Similar situation is being witnessed in Sanghrambhata, Kuleed, Nagsini, Cherhar, Matta, Lanyal, Hatta, Hullar, Lachkhanaza and Pochhal.
“Even the scheduled one-hour water supply is erratic.
The people have lamented that Kishtwar has an enormous potential for drinking water, which can fulfill the requirements of the entire Chenab Valley, but the PHE authorities, including PHE ministers and local legislators, have not taken the matter seriously.
“Better utilisation of schemes is needed,” they said.
The local unit of Class Fourth Employees Union (CFEU) of Education Department raised objections against the committee which was constituted to conduct tests for eligible candidates for next departmental promotion.

In a letter written to the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB), the state irrigation department has said that it will not be able to maintain the minimum draw down level (MDDL) of 510 feet at the Nagarjunasagar Dam in the Krishna river basin.
Even though the Water Board already has emergency pumps, the installation of a pumping station will cost `5 crore.
According to highly-placed sources in the corporation, the irrigation department has alerted the Water Board regarding the situation and asked it to prepare to carry out emergency pumping from the Krishna basin.
The official said that it would take at least two weeks to complete the bidding process after receiving the government’s approval.
Additional 25 MGD water to be supplied per day The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) have been finalising plans to ensure that there is no water scarcity in the upcoming summer months.
The Water Board will supply additional 25 million gallons a day (MGD) water from Godavari basin.
The Water Board has been supplying 56.00 MGD against the drawing capacity of 86.00 MGD from SripadaYellampally (Godavari) already.
Water Board managing director Mr M. Dana Kishore stated that adequate water was available and that temporary measures were being taken to ensure that there were no supply problems during the summer.
Mr Dana Kishore said 400 MGD of water was being supplied daily in the city.
The HMWS&SB MD has directed officials to complete the work by month-end in localities that were not being served by tankers to ensure that there was tap supply of water.

TIRUCHY: Students and faculties, staying in hostels and quarters of higher education institutions in Mathur, need not worry about water scarcity problem this summer as Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) is making arrangements to bring water from Mukkombu to these campuses through new pipelines.
The management of Bharathidasan University, Anna University and Indian Institute of Management have allotted special funds to lay pipelines from Mukkombu.
The TWAD has laid these pipelines to the three campuses, where the water will be supplied through a combined scheme.
Explaining the project, a senior official with TWAD said, “A water supply channel has been borrowed from the Combined Water Supply Scheme (CWSS) that runs to 1,766 habitats to Pudukkottai district.
The three institutes situated in one zone in Mathur on the city outskirts often face water shortage issue during every summer.
With the unprecedented drought for the past couple of years, the majority of the wells, borewells, canals and water bodies went dry in the region.
BDU Vice-Chancellor P Manisakar told Express, “Our engineers are working on the pipelines, sealing leakages, changing taps to save the excess usage of the water.
The water from TWAD will purvey to all our needs, mainly in students’ hostel.” BDU has 22 borewells, eight wells and three water bodies that have been dried out for the past years.
However, sources in the university claim that the water will not be enough to quench the thirst.
Instead, some of the officials are conducting various studies inside the campus on how to reuse the wastewater for commercial purposes.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa—Officials who huddled recently to discuss a debilitating drought delivered an unexpectedly apocalyptic conclusion: Unless Cape Town’s four million residents slash consumption, the seaside city under Table Mountain must take the rare step of shutting its taps to avoid running out of water.
Urban Crisis Cape Town plans to shut off municipal water delivery on July 9 if the supply continues to fall at the current alarming rate.
*Assumes partial compliance with Department of Water and Sanitation restrictions and normal evaporation †Assumes inadequate compliance with DWS restrictions and maximum evaporation Note: Critical and failure zones based on 2017 rainfall levels Source: City of Cape Town Since Feb. 1, Capetonians have lived with some of the most stringent municipal water restrictions on earth—13.2 gallons per person a day, enough on average for a 2-minute shower and three toilet flushes.
Created with Highcharts 6.0.4High and DryRainfall near Cape Town’s reservoirs was at a record low last year, making 2015 to 2017 the driest three-year period on record.Rainfall near Cape Town’s reservoirs was at a record low last year, making 2015 to 2017 the driest three-year period on record.Mean rainfall from three rainfall stations located in the region where Cape Town’s reservoirs are locatedSource: South African Weather Service Politicians are encouraging conservation by flouting unwashed, oily hair and bucket showers.
Police are confiscating hoses from people caught using public water to wash cars or sprinkle lawns.
The government has set a plan to call in the army to secure 200 central collections points, where residents would have to line up.
“There [is] an unreal kind of feeling about trying to fathom the massive impact that Day Zero could actually result in and how we could manage that,” said Xanthea Limberg, the city councilor in charge of Cape Town’s water and sanitation.
Samantha Reinders for The Wall Street Journal Some shops set limits for the amount of bottled water customers could buy.
Police recently ordered Mthokozizi Diwu to stop using water to wash cars and to pay a fine.
Ms. Limberg, the city councilor, said such devices will become standard across Cape Town.

Cape Town, South Africa’s coastal city of 4 million people, will be the world’s first modern city to run out of water.
(”When the taps run dry,” Time magazine, 2/19).
After three years of unprecedented drought, April 22 will become Day Zero.
And climate models show the city faces continued warming and a drier future.
Cape Town is not alone.
San Paulo was down to less than 20 days supply in 2015.
The Water Resources Institute, a Washington-based research organization, reports that more than a billion people currently live in water-scarce regions and as many a 3.5 billion (nearly half the world’s population) could experience water scarcity by 2025.
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As residents of a region with abundant water resources, we are reminded both how fortunate we are and how necessary it will be to protect those gifts going forward.

In addition, urbanisation, economic growth, poverty reduction and changing life styles towards more affluent and resource intensive societies will all impact water security in addition to energy and food production, which as you know also depend on water supply.
This is the reason why many of the discussion and advocacy work we undertook leading on to the adoption of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change were focussed on seek the attention and support of international development partners to commit resources and support ongoing initiatives aimed at operationalizing the water-energy nexus perspective into concrete actions for the post-2015 development agenda.
Many still believe it is too early to say climate change is directly responsible for the current water crisis in Cape Town but almost every water expert I know agrees it is largely a supply-side problem due to weather extremes, especially the recurrent droughts that have persisted in the region in the last couple of years, coupled of course with increase in demand from population growth and economic development.
When the water security challenge is predominantly a supply-side problem, there is a limit to how far you can go with demand-side management interventions especially if you focus mainly on behaviour change to reduce demand.
What is your vision for the water sector in Africa?
I planned and moderated several high-level discussions involving very senior representatives of international organizations, ambassadors/permanent representatives on the cross-cutting nature of various international development themes, including the SDGs on water, energy, climate change and ecosystems.
Yes, for example, research and analytical work on IIASA’s flagship research initiative on global water security was particularly exciting.
WFaS considers a suite of possible future scenarios and how global transformations, e.g. population growth, urbanization, climate change, technological innovations and even socioeconomic factors would impact global water security at the nexus of water, food and energy security.
Energy costs can reach 60 percent of total operating costs of utilities and this is expected to increase in the coming years due to population growth, improvements in access to safe drinking water and stiffer regulations on water quality standards.
The world in which we live is changing.

The drought forces residents to trek 15km to fetch water for drinking and domestic use along Ng’inyang or Chemoling’ot rivers in Tiaty subcounty.
It is in the same Cheptaran village where six people, including a five-year old child, were reported to have died of hunger between Wednesday and Sunday last week.
The resident says residents are going for days without food and water.
However, Tiaty subcounty deputy commissioner Yussuf Huka denied that people died of hunger.
Nyumba Kumi official William Yano said 10 people have lost their lives since last year due to hunger, although the cases went unreported.
“Our people have not been supplied with relief foods since May last year, yet numbers of their livestock also died due to the harsh drought,” Ripko MCA Daniel Tuwit said.
Once it gets finish I will be forced to trek 10km to fetch some in the drying up river Ng’inyang,” she said.
Elsewhere in Baringo North Subcounty, women and children are forced to spend their nights in seasonal rivers searching for water amid harsh droughts More than 10,000 children are on the verge of dropping out of school due to water scarcity and hunger in arid areas.
The residents appealed to the county and national government and well-wishers to supply them with enough water bowsers to quench their thirst.
Last week on Wednesday, Water PS Fred Segor supplied six water bowsers to serve Pokot residents in Tiaty subcounty, riling residents of neighbouring Baringo North and South subcounties.

Hahap (Ranchi): The only visible change in Hahap village, under the panchayat of same name in Namkum block, some 25km from capital headquarters, is that it now has a motorable road ever since it was adopted by Ranchi’s BJP MP Ram Tahal Choudhary in 2015.
Exactly three years on, the adarsh (model) dream of Hahap, with 432 households, is a mockery with water scarcity, too few working toilets, many defunct hand pumps and solar streetlights, no health centre or proper school building, power cuts for as many as 14 hours a day, among others.
Perhaps to forget these many woes, many villagers drink hadiya.
When The Telegraph team went to Hahap last week, mukhiya Archana Devi Munda of the Congress, said apart from the initial adarsh buzz, not much happened.
BJP MP Choudhary claimed Archana, a Congress candidate, was "lax".
Gram pradhan Padlochan Singh Munda said two new hand pumps set up with taps did not work.
Gram pradhan Munda wondered why a two-storey building meant to set up a health centre was abandoned.
"A proper school building needs at least five to six rooms.
"I became mukhiya in 2015.
Asked, MP Choudhary said a proper road to this village was his biggest achievement, besides toilets and power connection.