PURA and NAWEC officials meet Gunjur authorities over water issue
Thursday 11th March 2021
Gunjur Alikalo Alhagie Ba Giki Darboe and representatives from the council of elders and the chairman of Gunjur water committee earlier today met with PURA and NAWEC officials to inspect ongoing works to provide the settlement with quality water for domestic consumption.
PURA was led my Mrs Jamilatou Saidy who underscored that her agency takes customer complaints seriously at every stage of these complains when they are lodged.
Since PURA received complains about the water quality of Gunjur’s water supply from NAWEC, PURA has been working with the utilities corporation to ensure that the issue is resolved as quickly as possible. Consequently, we are here to ensure that the work is progressing to restore quality water for the people of Gunjur.
“Any stage of complain from consumers we have to make sure that it is looked at and as Gunjur water is not satisfactory as expected by consumers, we acknowledge your complaint and we will keep engaging Nawec to make sure the work is quickly done for the community to have clean and pure water for consuming” the PURA top official Jamilatou Saidy has said.
She added that even community people can do regular monitoring to see how far the work is progressing to see that the water issue is resolved quickly. The contractor for the restoration of quality water to Gunjur has given assurances that the work will be completed within two months although some times things can be unpredictable but confident that the project will be completed within the anticipated timeframe.
Alhagie Dibba, Water Supply Director (Sewage) was among the NAWEC officials who visited the Nyofelleh borehole to inspect the progress of the
work. Since there is lessthan 2km of distance remaining to connect the Nyofelleh borehole to Gunjur water system, the work could be finished in less than the two months project time.
It could be recalled that Biomedical Scientist Ahmed Manjang took water samples from taps in Gunjur and lodged a complaint to PURA about the quality of water pumped out in NAWEC taps for both public and private users.
It emerged that the people of Gunjur have been at the receiving end of ‘unsafe’ drinking water for five years thanks to severe neglect on the part of National Water and Electricity Company (Nawec), a report by the public utilities regulatory authority has declared.
In a frantic bid to curb further health implications from the defective water supply, Jamilatou Saidy of PURA postulated Nawec has been mandated to provide ‘pure and clean water for the people of Gunjur by bringing water tanks’ prior to the completion of new borehole at Nyofelleh which is expected to meet water quality standards.
This move, in her telling, is to provide people with pure and clean water in the interim since Nawec indicated it will take them three to four weeks to address the water issue.
Jamilatou saidy added: “We had a meeting with Nawec and they promised it will take them one month to solve the water problem in Gunjur. Our purpose of coming here is to find out what can be put in place in the interim for supply of pure and clean water in Gunjur. As soon as the Alikalo and his team allocated us places, tanks will be put at all those places”.