SOMALI: Norwegian funded GSA YME and NORSOM supply clean drinking water outside the capital
Aweys Osman Yusuf
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Mogadishu 12, May.07 ( Sh.M.Network) YME, NORSOM and GSA have still been engrossed in supplying pure natural water to internally displaced people on the outskirts of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, where repeated bitter battles coerced hundreds of thousands of Somali civilians to flee as they are littered under the trees around Hawa Abdi settlement and Afgoi district, 30 KM west of Mogadishu.
The relief agencies YME, NORSOM and the local NGO GSA funded by the Norwegian government have long been providing IDPs with natural pure water which is too vital for the IDPs who had to drink from the unsafe rain ponds and the river in Afgoi.
The Norwegian sponsored aid agencies performed their relief efforts in the settlements of Taleh, Lafole, Elasha and Hawa Abdi hospital where hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees displaced by the recent fighting in Mogadishu could be evident under the trees and in makeshift shelters as clean drinking water was hardly available to them.
Mohammed Hersi Awale, one of the officers of Somali NGO, General Service Agency (GSA), explained Shabelle that the water supplying was proceeding on the outskirts of the capital. “General Service Agency (GSA) in collaboration with YME and NORSOM provides 100 barrels of pure drinking water in five settlements around Hawa Abdi and there are nearly 25,000 IDPs who fled the last fighting in Mogadishu. We are definitely intending to reach thousands of other Somalis that remain homeless and waterless in the country’s southern regions until now,” he said.
Hersi pointed out that the Somali refugees were yet insiting that 100 barrels of drinking water could not satisfy their waterless problems. “They demanded that number of water barrels be increased,” he said.
The IDPs have been so much grateful to GSA, YME and NORSOM for the much needed water aid. Dr. Hawa Abdi, who is famous for helping, curing and receiving the IDPs in her settlements voluntarily, asked YME, NORSOM and GSA to double their relief efforts in the area.
She said most of the IDPs could not afford buying clean natural drinking water. “More refugees who fled the droughts in their province of southern Somalia have already been here and hundreds of thousands of other IDPs that fled the fighting in Mogadishu arrived in the past months, making life here more difficult than it was so GSA, YME and NORSOM were great relief to people here because now they have an access of clean water but we would still ask them to increase the amount of water they are supplying,” she said.
The Norwegian supported agencies have recently finalized repairing water wells in Wargala, Elgula and Hingod settlements in Mudug province, central Somalia. Water wells were out of operation for the past ten years, according to Hersi.
“People in those rural settlements were relieved because they and their animals had to travel more than 90 km to find water ponds. We have repaired their wells and installed an electric power in their areas,” he said.
Shabelle Media Network Somalia
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