The Human Security Department (HSD) of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) is constructing two mechanised boreholes for the Mount Sinai Senior High School at Akropong-Akuapem in the Eastern Region.
The project, which will provide clean water for the students and the entire school, is expected to be completed in two weeks.
Upon completion, the 1,500 students, mostly the girls, will no longer have to trek long distances to fetch water from the two dirty streams outside the school that have served as the main sources of water for the entire school for decades.
Prompt intervention
The NSCS’s quick intervention comes barely two days after a Daily Graphic publication that highlighted the acute water problem facing the students and the school in its last Thursday, March 6, 2014 edition.
The publication, headlined “Mount Sinai SHS students desperate for clean drinking water”, is said to have caught the attention of the NSCS.
Just two days after the publication, a team of surveyors from the HSD was at the school to carry out a survey to identify the best spot to drill the boreholes.
Water flow
When the Daily Graphic visited the school on Tuesday, March 11, 2014, personnel of the HSD were busy drilling the first mechanised borehole at the entrance of the mission school.
At the time of the visit, the crew had hit the water table and were getting about 100 litres of water per minute.
However, a hydrogeologist of the HSD, Mr Evans Amenu, stated that “we are not yet in a position to determine the quality of the water being pumped out. “Until we take a water sample to the Water Research Institute , we cannot determine if the quality of the water is good for consumption or needs to be treated.”
“If it must be treated, we will have to put up a treatment plant to pump clean water to the campus”, he added.
Background
Currently, the two dirty streams outside the school which are the main sources of water for the school also serve as drinking water for pigs and other domestic animals.
Two mechanised boreholes dug by the school’s PTA and a philanthropist in 2008 and 2010 has a high concentration of iron that causes the pumping machines to break down often.
Source: Daily Graphic