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Kenya

Water crisis hits famine stricken areas in Kenya

NAIROBI, Jan 2, 2006 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- A water crisis is looming in most parts of famine stricken North-Eastern province of Kenya, with families unable to cook the relief food from the government and charity organizations, local media reported Monday.

Regional Development Authorities Minister Mohamed Abdi who is on a tour to monitor the ongoing relief effort in Wajir district in the northeast found that most shallow wells and dams have dried up leaving villagers depending on trucked water, according to Kenya News Agency.

It is not only expensive but hardly to meet the needs of the residents and their livestock, it added.

At Mansa village, 80 km east of Wajir town, a basin with over 300 wells that generations and their livestock have depended on for their water supplies was like a graveyard after the wells all dried up following five seasons of inadequate rains.

Halima Ali, a local villager who collects her daily ration of 20 liters from an underground tank at Mansa primary school where a government truck had earlier dumped some water, said people were forced to cook only tea for their children as preparing other food required too much water.

"We have food in the house but we cannot cook it because the maize and beans supplied under the famine relief program require too much water to cook," she said.

The mother of six said that private water vendors charge between 20 (about 27 U.S. cents) and 50 shillings (about 68 U.S. cents) for a twenty-liter jerrycan of water.

There was some hope for the Mansa villagers though as a government drilling rig arrived in the village on last Friday to sink a borehole that will provide a regular water supply.

The borehole, to be complete in the next two weeks, is one of eight to be sunk around the district in an emergency program that will see each of Wajir's four constituencies get two boreholes.

Abdi said available funds can only allow the initial eight boreholes.

At Tarbaj Dam, the convergence point for herdsmen and their livestock from a 30 km radius, thousands of goats, sheep and camels scrabble for the available water.

Abdi Ibrahim, a local, was worried that the huge influx of animals would deplete the water sooner than they thought. They expected the water to be finished in the next two weeks and with the rains not expected until March, the community is pondering their next move.

Dozens of people and hundreds of livestock have died of hunger and thirst due to a drought in the arid eastern and northern regions of Kenya.

In his new year speech on early Sunday, President Mwai Kibaki declared food shortages ravaging parts of the east African country a "national disaster" and called for adequate interventions on the ground.