Water, water everywhere but there is none to drink! In April, when I was in Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, I was shown these privately-constructed water tanks. They were at the hotel (MPH) that I stay at when in Kinshasa. The hotel is near Kintambo community. The tanks ensured that the hotel has water without depending upon the city-supplied water.
Eighty percent of urban Congolese have access to safe drinking water. While only 30 percent of rural Congolese have access to safe drinking water. Together, less than 50 percent of Congolese have access to safe drinking water.
via ipsnews.net
In recent months, no one in the Congolese capital has been spared the effects of water shortages. Where spending entire days criss-crossing Kinshasa in search of water with battered containers in hand was previously the unhappy task of women and children, now men in suits have joined the fray.
"I know of many of my friends whose official vehicles are shuttling back and forth to bring water to their homes each day," says Félicen Kabamba Tino, at the Faculty of Science at the University of Kinshasa. "Here at the university, the lecturers come with their jerry cans and other receptacles to get water at the administrative building."
Fidèle Mwaku, an associate professor at the National Pedagogy University, agrees. "I had a friend from the Plateau des Professeurs neighbourhood [popular for university lecturers] come to draw water at my house in Lemba."
Mwaku says households across the city are doing the same to deal with the situation. Kinshasa's poorer residents have long been resigned to this state of affairs.
"We've been waiting a week for water, and the last time we had it, it came at three in the morning only to stop again a few hours later," complains Judith Kapenda, mother of four, in the Kinshasa commune of Kintambo.
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