There was spontaneous joy in ten communities in the Jomoro Constituency in the Western Region when the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Dorcas Affo-Toffey, carried out a promise to connect the communities to a mechanised borehole for the supply of potable drinking water.
At a separate commissioning of the project, one thing was clear – the residents were delighted to have, for the first time in several years, potable drinking water and for other house chores.
Residents of Fante New Town, Nyame Bekyere, New Ankasa, Awia-Futu Junction, among others could not hide their joy while indicating that they previously had to trek for hours to fetch water from a dugout.
“Pupils walk several kilometres to fetch water from these dugouts before they attend schools, which resulted in lateness on a daily basis,” one resident of Fante New Town told this reporter.
The challenges the communities faced sourcing water came to light during the commissioning of the one of the mechanised boreholes at Fante New Town.
Fante New Town is one out of the beneficiaries of ten completed mechanised boreholes for the residents in the Constituency.
The Odikro of Fante New Town, Job Paintsil, commended the MP for constructing the borehole for the benefit of his community.
He said the MP, by completing and handing over the borehole to them, indicated that she was concerned about the challenges his people went through in sourcing water for household chores and, most especially, for drinking.
He, however, warned that if Dorcas Affo-Toffey was unable to construct the borehole, he was going to make sure she did not step foot on their land.
Nana Paintsil was optimistic that the construction of the borehole would not be the last thing the MP would carry out in the area and that the community would benefit from other projects.
Odikro Paintsil, however, used the occasion to appeal to the MP to help put the only road in the area in good shape given that it was in a deplorable state.
Addressing the gathering, Dorcas Affo-Toffey explained that she was compelled to do the project based on a request from the inhabitants when she was on a campaign tour of the area.
She pointed out that given that water was life, she did not joke with the request. As a result, she took it upon herself to ensure the speedy execution of the project to save lives.
The MP explained that even though she would not disclose the cost of one mechanised borehole, or the entire ten in other communities, a lot of money had gone in.
She, therefore, called on the residents to make the maintenance culture their hallmark on the borehole project because it was the source of livelihoods.
