By Hopeson Kafumbwa, Public Relations Intern
Some Mwanza and Neno communities have hailed the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) Limited for drilling four boreholes in the two districts thereby fighting waterborne diseases.
The community members said this on November 15, 2024, when ESCOM officials handed over the boreholes to the communities courtesy of the Mozambique-Malawi Interconnection Project (MOMA) Resettlement Action Plan.
The corporation handed over three boreholes in Group Village Head (GVH) Chimulango in Traditional Authority (T/A) Ntchache, Mwanza and one in GVH Msalawatha, T/A Mlauli in Neno.
Speaking at the function, ESCOM Senior Projects Engineer, Dixon Nseula, urged the communities to safeguard the boreholes and MOMA transmission line infrastructure such as towers from vandalism and encroachment.
“Please do not spend time under the ESCOM power lines to avoid accidents,” said Nseula, who leads engineers in supervising house construction works for MOMA PAPs.
On his part, Mwanza District Commissioner’s representative, Mr Saidi promised to engage Water and Sanitation Ministry officials to empower the communities with borehole maintenance skills.
He, therefore, urged the communities to mobilise resources for the boreholes’ maintenance through a task force.
Taking his turn, GVH Chimulango praised ESCOM for drilling the boreholes under MOMA, saying it would offer his subjects access to clean water and reduce cases of waterborne diseases.
“My village used to be the first area to register cholera cases year-in and year-out, but these boreholes would enable my subjects access potable water hence diseases such as cholera would be a thing of the past,” he said.
“This is first time that people around this area are drinking water from a borehole otherwise we used to fetch water from unprotected wells and streams. The coming in of MOMA project has changed the community.”
One of the beneficiaries, Mercy Banda said for the first in decades, they will be fetching water from boreholes.
“This is my first time since I was born to see a borehole in this village. I am very happy because we used to travel long distances to fetch water. Thank you, MOMA, for drilling the boreholes. This will help improve our health standards,” she said.
Another beneficiary, Elida Yohane said the borehole would help reduce cases of gender-based violence by husbands who get suspicious when their wives return late from wells to fetch water.
“We used to spend a lot of time searching for water in wells and streams and at times, our husbands would become jealous suspecting we were out cheating,” Yohane said.
Another woman, Lian Ng’oma, thanked MOMA for coming to their rescue by solving the challenge of lack of access to clean water.
ESCOM is drilling boreholes, and constructing houses, health centres and school blocks to empower Project Affected Persons for MOMA under the Resettlement Action Plan.