Kenya: Water for all – a pipe dream in Nation

From: odhiambo okecth

We celebrated the International Forests Day yesterday and as usual, the usual cast assembled at some point to talk about what they have been talking about for the last so many years….forest cover being depleted, need for re-afforestation, bla bla bla.

Today, we are celebrating the International Water Day. Again, we will listen to the same old cast giving us advice and words of wisdom.

Words, words words…have never built anything.

On Thursday evening, I watched ‘Taswira ya Dhiki’ on NTV and it was shocking how the people of Pokot are suffering want of water. Water points are far apart and people walk long distances in search of water.

The result is that people end up drinking anything they come across. There was this pond with very dirty water, with a dog bathing, with cattle dung and all, and yet, people we drinking this water raw as it is.

These are the ironies we normally come across in life, more so in Kenya. A time was when the song was Water for all by the year 2000. The year 2000 came and went and Nairobi, the Capital City of Kenya still has dry taps! How can it be possible for the people of Pokot to have clean water when Nairobi has no sure access to clean water?

It all boils down to we the people. Are we fine listening to all these nonsense during such days as the International Water Day? No. We need action. We need pipes to be built all across Kenya to make water available to all.

Just pose for a moment and look at the magnitude of the scandals our leaders have worked so hard to foment. If we used just half the efforts we put into crafting the Goldenbergs, the Anglo- Leasings, the Grand Regency’s, the Tritons, the Maize thefts, etc, we would avail water to all immediately.

How much does it cost to build a water pipe from River Yala to Marsabit? It would not even cost half Anglo- Leasing.

How much will it cost to build a water pipe from Athi River to Pokot? It will not cost even half Triton. But then, if we are given a chance to vote in new leaders, whom do we fight for? We fight for all the known thieves, people who have stolen our maize to make us hungry; people who have sold our own Grand Regency; people who cannot add simple mathematics- for convenience; people who have made Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg happen.

Such is the resilience of Kenyans.

We are our own worst enemies. We would rather continue with such talking at the expense of tasking and equipping our people.

I shudder with grief when the whole world stands to attention in celebrating the International Water Day at a time we are killing Lake Victoria, yet, this is the second largest fresh water lake in the world.

It is a known fact that nothing is being done to rid Lake Victoria of the choking water hyacinth. It is a known fact that water is just not a problem in far places such as Pokot. The people around Lake Victoria are walking long distances in search of water, yet, nothing is being done to make Lake Victoria clean and useful.

But the bottom line is funny; call an election today and we will all forget that it is the same rudderless leadership that we have saddled ourselves with for the last 50 years that is responsible for our state. We will fight, rape and maim in their names just to give them a license to continue plundering our country.

How sometimes I wish the Quake that hit Japan could only come to Kenya and zero in only at our Parliament when all of them are inside.

Odhiambo T Oketch
Komarock Nairobi

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