Water a life-threatening issue for many

GIVEN all the whinging, whining and complaining about the shortages of water, particularly in the Dublin area, perhaps I may proffer a number of points for reflection while they wait at the end of their dry taps with buckets and pans for the supply to come on:

Have you ever considered that this is the daily existence for many people around the world for whom the search for water is a life-threatening issue? Have you ever appreciated the fact you have clean, easily accessible water?

The UN suggests that each person needs 20-50 litres of safe, fresh water a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning. More than one in six people worldwide — 894 million — don’t have access to this amount of safe, fresh water.

Today 2.5 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s &1.5 million preventable deaths each year.

Many people say access to water is a right. But with rights come responsibilities, something we seem slow to grasp.

As someone who lived as a volunteer for 30 months in central Uganda without the benefit of running water or electricity every day, I wait in hopeful expectation that we may realise how lucky we are and then demand from our leaders the proper resourcing of local government to properly manage and maintain the resources we need to function that we, as members of the civic society, have willingly contributed to.

Shane Ambrose

Shanagolden

Co Limerick