Group Laments Over Cost To Supply Benue IDPs Water Daily
• An IDP camp Photo
The Medicines Sans Frontieres also known as Doctors Without Borders on Thursday said that it has been expending N24,000 on daily basis to supply water to one of the Internally Displaced Persons’ camps located at Otese along Makurdi/Laafia road in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State.
The Project Coordinator in the state, Mitch Rhyner, disclosed this to journalists during the visit to the camp.
Rhyner who said that the camp has about 11,000 inmates said that the organisation had been supplying eight tankers of water to meet the needs of the displaced persons.
He explained that the organization had tried 13 times to carry out ecological survey of the area to
see the possibility of drilling boreholes at the camp but the texture of the soil prevented the gesture.
“We have been water trucking every day with eight tankers to the camp and we pay N3,000 for each of the tanker that is why we are calling on the State Government to provide water to the people.
“It is outrageously expensive to do water trucking on daily basis. We have also asked the state to provide the water for free.
“We feel that we are already doing much. We are paying the drivers, paying for the trucks and the fuel. We will want the state to provide the water. So, we have put that request in an official letter and we are waiting for a response. We haven’t heard from the governor or from the ministry of water resources yet,” Rhyner said.
The project coordinator however decried the continuous stay of the inmates in a school environment and desired that the displaced persons should have alternative places to stay so as to allow normal classes to resume in the school.
“One consequence of people staying in school is that the school is no longer being used and that is going to be bad for education. One of our goals in our advocacy is to have shuttles being built including shelters so that people can leave the schools and the schools can be used for classes.
Rhyner further said, “As you can see, we are overworked. We provide basic health care three times a week; Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We have those tents and there are no sufficient spaces.
“This place has been here from April, May but we started our intervention in Ortese camp in June, July last year. We intended to stay for three months but because the needs proceed and because others are not providing support, we stayed definitely till this point.
