The World Development Movement

The World Development Movement (WDM) tackles the underlying causes of poverty. We lobby decision makers to change the policies that keep people poor. We research and promote positive alternatives. We work alongside people in the developing world who are standing up to injustice. We campaign on Dirty Aid, Dirty Water, Debt and Trade Justice issues

In Ghana, as everywhere, water means life. But this is a country where almost half the population has no regular safe supply of water. The most vulnerable are most affected those without the money to spare or the voice to demand their rights. In the countryside where most of the country lives, two-thirds regularly take their chances with unclean water. In the slums of the cities the sewage flows away down open trenches and only one family in ten is lucky enough to have their own water supply.

A typical household in one of the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city, might spend 40p a day on water – the same amount as a typical household in London. But in Ghana that is a day’s earnings spent.

Hawa Amadu is a widow in her 70s at the head of one such household. She lives with three of her six surviving children. Her grandchildren travel over a mile every day to fetch water for them all. “Sometimes I will go without food so my grandchildren have water,” she says. “The government should understand this – water comes before food. Soon we will have to drink air.” Like Amadu, many ordinary Ghanaians are worried for the future of their water supply. A dire situation has got worse in recent years as Ghana’s water supply is pushed into an undemocratic privatisation. Decisions made behind closed doors and designed to pave the way for privatisation have already led to unaffordable price rises. Meanwhile a hold up on investment until the privatisation goes through is leading to deterioration in the system and a spread in water-born diseases like guinea worm. In response a massive popular movement has sprung up, demanding that water reform should be about water for all, not just for those who can afford it.

Water: a human right or just a commodity?

"I have my doubts and fears about water privatisation and whether it will effectively provide clean water for all areas of the city. There will be high costs to rehabilitate the system and to lay pipes and taps so that we can all have access to water. As an example, I don't have water in my house. The cost of this will be very high and my question is who will pay? How much are people willing to pay for their water in Freetown, and what about those who cannot afford to pay? Before the war, we had good access to clean water, but since then the city has got much bigger and the continuous improvements required have not been made."
Lucinda Amara, Programme Director of Sierra Leonean agency Forut

In October last year, Vicky Cann, the World Development Movement’s Water Campaigns Officer, visited one of the world’s poorest countries - Sierra Leone. This is an extract from her diary.

Today I am off to Murraytown, a community right on the coast in the north of Freetown. I am going to visit 18 year old Aminata Magbity, who I met in a taxi a few days before. Away from the traffic and fumes and noise of Freetown's main streets, Murraytown feels very quiet and quite rural, in many ways.

Firstly, we meet Hawanta, aged 9, who lives nearby in Marli Street and who is collecting water at a public tap to take back up to her house a few hundred yards away. She says that it is the job of both girls and boys in her household to collect water. Nearby is Sally with a heavy bucket full of water carefully balanced on her head, ready to go back to her home. She tells me that she is 8 years old. I express surprise to Aminata that she should be so old – her size is that of a child much younger. Aminata says that she is under-developed because of the burden of poverty and of carrying heavy weights, like this bucket of water - which I would struggle to carry for more than a few yards without spilling.

I am shocked that so many children are doing such heavy, physical work, at such a young age here. All over Freetown, children are greatly involved in water provision. Whether it is selling it on the roadside, collecting and carrying water, or doing chores such as clothes washing – like Isatu Sesay who is 7 – children seem to be losing out on time to play or to simply hang out, in order to help their families to survive amongst poverty.

Later, we meet Mohamed Elsia Jalloh and Abubakarr Jalloh. They are brothers 20 and 17 respectively, and they both are studying accountancy. They live in a compound where they have had a private tap installed, which runs off the public pipes with a meter. "We work as a team to pay the bill – for the 20 people who live here in the compound, it costs 90,000 Leones (about $30) every four months when someone comes to read the meter. This is quite expensive - especially as the tap never works during the day and only in the evenings once or twice a week. When the water is running, we store it, for use in the dry times."

But, Mohamed and Abubakarr, like Aminata, are probably lucky by Sierra Leone standards. Outside both of these compounds is a community of maybe 200 very poor people who are living in 'temporary' shacks made of wood and corrugated iron. This community does not have easy access to a tap and so they are effectively subsidised by Aminata's family – who pay water rates for the tap in their compound – or they trek back to a public tap, which is a way away over very uneven ground.

So many poor families are dependent on the kindness of others to get water – people who let them share their tap. It would be fair to assume that this kind of generosity could be threatened if there is a programme to install meters across Freetown, which would measure the exact amount of water consumed. In that instance, will people still be willing and able to afford to help each other out?
The World Bank have made clear that as part of their power and water project they plan to implement a meter installation programme and an aggressive disconnection programme.

As George Saquee of the United Nations agency UNICEF told me on Friday, it is important that if people possibly can, they do pay something for the water they consume. But there will always be those who can't afford to pay – what will happen to them?