Almost everyone understand the importance of water as our lives hugely depend on it. Despite the common knowledge that water is life, for decades this precious commodity has been so scarce to the residents of Lilongwe and the surrounding areas.
For a long time people from the Capital City and other areas have had to grapple with the problem of intermittent and erratic water supply with no hope in sight.
This has been the case because the Lilongwe Water Board was unable to keep up with the ever growing demand of the commodity in the city.
Unfortunately, lack of political will by the previous governments only worsened the situation as the demand of water multiplied from 1966 when tha Kamuzu Dam 1 was constructed.
As per Lilongwe Water Board, the dam had the storage capacity of 3.5 million cubic metres only which catered for a population of 19 000 people. As of 2023, the LWB serve a customer base of 1.2 million.
As they say that everything falls on the leadership, President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera’s leadership set out to achieve what others neglected-which is providing safe, clean and potable water befitting the living standards of the city.
Everyone with good memory would recall that one of the Super-Hi5 pillars was to provide households with clean water. And now that the Kamuzu Dam 1 has been raised, the capacity expanded from 5 million cubic metres to 25 million cubic metres, President Chakwera has not only delivered what he promised but did it beyond expectations.
Speaking on Tuesday in Malingunde, Lilongwe during the official commissioning of the Dam, President Chakwera expressed surprise that previous governments were busy with luxuries that benefited the elites when the majority had no access to clean water.
He said: “As far as I was concerned, it was a shame for a country in the 21st Century to be preoccupied with luxuries that benefit the few when many do not even have basics like clean water.”
This rapid transformation in terms of water supply also feeds into the Malawi2063 agenda of increasing number of people with potable water on one hand and in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) key area which is reducing poverty which comes as a result of failure to access clean water on the other.
The project has been jointly funded by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Malawi Government through the Lilongwe Water Supply Project to the tune of EUR 27 million.
It is expected that after the completion of Water Treatment Works 3, it will produce 175 000 cubic metres per day from the current 125 000 cubic metres per day which is an addition of 50 000 cubic metres per day.
In a country where people join choruses when things go wrong, it is good to give credit where it is due. Today, all the credits go to President Chakwera for setting the priorities right and correcting his predecessors’ wrongs.