I have been participating in a series of meetings held at village level on the issue of drinking water in Katunayaka and Jaela area. At one such meeting held recently an elderly lady commented saying, ‘I have suffered from lack of drinking water over almost 60 years now’.
A young woman worker in the Free Trade Zone at another meeting said, ‘Our neighbours start quarreling when they go to fetch water at the tap on the roadside’.
At a gathering of ‘People without Shelter’ at Liyanagemulla one person very confidently said, ‘I do not have such a problem because there is a good well near the abandoned paddy land on the border of the FTZ’. I as the animator of that meeting posed the question to him, ‘Where do the toilet outlets of the boarding houses in the area are channeled’? Everybody knew that they are channeled to that same marshy land where the well is located. Then suddenly it dawned on him the quality of water he has been drinking.
Two weeks ago at a meeting in Katunayaka, a mother was grieving that she could give only a bucket of water for ablution for her young daughter in the morning who was sitting for the GCE O/L examination.
At another meeting at the Methodist Church at Kurana a mother said, ‘already a number of children who have tried to cross the road to fetch water, have been knocked down by the speeding vehicles’.
Those were grievances expressed by people at various meetings held to motivate the people to pressurize the local government authorities to provide drinking water in the area of Seeduwa Katunayaka Urban Council.
A campaign has now being launched by the Katunayaka Seeduwa unit of the ‘National Alliance for Protection Natural Resources and Human Rights’ in the Gampaha District in collaboration with the ‘Tax Payers Association’ of Seeduwa and Katunayaka.
The administrative area of Jaela Pradeshiya Saba, which too has a very high income from the taxes they collect from the factories located in the Ekala industrial zone is another area in the District of Gampaha where drinking of water is very scarce, due to the pollution of ground water with industrial waste discharged by the factories.
The politicians at every election make promises to provide a proper supply of water service. But these politicians soon forget their promises once voted into power because they have other agendas, the projects which fill their pockets with commissions they receive from the contractors.
The ordinary people have had the illusion that the politicians whom they voted into power would solve their problems. Gradually, people have begun to realize that the politicians make only empty promises. These people who have surrendered all their rights to the politicians and never imagined about their role as citizens, are now disillusioned.
However due to the discussion held they now realize that unless they take appropriate actions themselves as regards this burning issue, they will have to live without water for another decade.
Drinking water is essential for life and as such an urgent need for every living being. The water resources are a lifeline for survival of every living being. Thus even the UN has agreed to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.
However, so many people living in the area of this Urban Council in Seeduwa-Katunayaka and Pradeshiya Saba of Jaela, have for decades survived without or with very little drinking water for their day to day use.
These local authorities, with a high income from the industrial and commercial establishments have the capacity and the provisions to provide drinking water for the general public but unfortunately have failed to do so.
In this context, Sramabimani has undertaken to support ‘National Alliance for Protection of Natural Resources and Human Rights’ of Gampaha District and the Tax Payers Association of Seeduwa and Katunayaka to hold group meetings at the village level and to mobilize the people on the issue of drinking water and pressurise the political authorities to give it top priority. In view of this the communities where meetings were held have now come forward to write mass petitions to the relevant authorities asking them to initiate a major project which could provide drinking water to their people.
Fr. Sarath Iddamalgoda
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