So near yet so far

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IMPROVISATION: The water tank bought by Christina’s brother with his lottery wining used to store water from the mountain and channeled to the village. This crude water supply system is unreliable and inefficient

Villages in upper Penrissen area just half an hour’s drive from Kuching still without piped water

KUCHING: Arudip Dano, 61, has to steel herself to take her bath and do her washing as the visually impaired grandmother has to cross a busy road to get to a mountain stream some distance from her house in Kampung Punau.

Although her village, Kampung Punau, along Puncak Borneo Road in the Penrissen area is just 27km from here, it does not have treated piped water supply and the villagers have to walk some distance to collect water for cooking and washing.

Arudip’s daughter, Christina Soing, 34, said the village never had treated water supply and she and her fellow villagers are resentful that they have been waiting for so long for this basic amenity when they live so near the state capital.

“We cannot live like this forever. All this while, we have been relying on a nearby mountain stream for our source of water and even though it never dries up during drought season, the problem is we have to walk some distance to get water.

“We have to go down to the water source to do our washing and bathing while for domestic purposes, we have to carry water home,” she said.

Recently, they partially solved their water woes when one of Christina’s brothers won the first prize in a lottery and used the winnings to buy PVC pipes and water tanks to store water from the stream nearer to the village.

They then fixed pipes to the tank to channel the untreated water nearer to their homes but this improvised water supply system is unreliable and inefficient.

“The problem here is when there is not much water in the tank the pressure will also drop and when this happens our taps will also run dry. We have to wait until the tank is half full for the pressure to be strong enough to push water out,” she said.

She said without reliable water supply was very inconvenient to everyone especially those with small children and disabled family members like her mother as they still had to go to the stream for washing and bathing.

Apart from Kampung Punau, other villages in upper part of Penrissen, including Kampung Bunuk, Giam, Garung, Semadang and Karu also do not have treated water supply and have to rely on streams and rivers for water.

The people there are puzzled why they still do not have piped water although the main water pipe channeling water from the nearby catchment area passes through their area.