Struggle to get water a serious issue

By Aruna Lolani 15 July 2017, 12:00AM

Peta Lemu is residing with her family at Fasito’o Tai. She is a mother of five grown up kids and she has longed to express her unhappy thoughts about not having enough water for her family. 

“To be honest, having no money is fine, but living without water is a very different story,” she said. 

“This is because water is life and without water, we cannot survive. 

“I don’t want to go into details because I’ve seen some other village members’ views featured in your newspaper on the same issue. But nothing has changed. 

“I don’t know why I need to voice my request as well when hundreds of requests have already been given and nothing has been done yet. 

“So for the hundredth time this has always been a problem and we are so very tired of telling the story over and over again. 

Peta lives with her family in the part of Fasito’o called Fasito’o-Uta, far from the main road. 

She said her family is one of the many families living around this area suffering from the lack of water supply. 

“This is not a new problem,” she said. 

“Well we don’t want to give up knocking on the government’s door to have mercy on us. So I also want to say something to add to the  many requests made to them for our water pipes in that area of our village. 

 “There is something they must do to try and make the water pipes reach our home.

“The only people who are enjoying a good water supply are the ones living in the inner areas. 

The mother also says that even having a water tank is useless. 

“Of course we’re thankful that we have a water tank at home but to be honest what’s the point of having a water tank but there’s no water in it? 

“The only time to rest is when it’s raining but even with the rainwater, it doesn’t fill the tank halfway at all. 

We caught up with this mother while she was at the disconnected pipe. 

“This is where almost everyone on our side comes and fetches water, but right now the water is off, so I’m going to go to the forest where there’s another disconnected pipe. 

“This is how hard we try to look for water. We visit every area we know where there are disconnected pipes to see if we can get our buckets filled. 

“Right now we only hope to have a specific area where we can get water to fill our tanks instead of walking from one area to another area to try and look for water.” 

By Aruna Lolani 15 July 2017, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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