Liberia's struggle for water

By Jonathan Paye-Layleh
BBC, Monrovia

Selling water has become a popular business for Monrovia's youth

Fourteen years of civil war have left Liberians without regular electricity and water.

Homes are without piped water and heavily-clogged sewer tanks have started to burst on the streets of the capital, Monrovia, causing pollution.

Monrovia was built more than 200 years ago to house the elite sectors of society.

But the capital is now home to migrants who have abandoned rural life to seek employment and better education in the urban areas.

Burgeoning business

Hand pumps are the main source of drinking water in the capital.

Children carrying dozens of jerry cans scramble for water from available community pumps.

They have to rush home before dark in a city where only the well-heeled use power generators.

"It is frustrating - it is tiresome to go home from work and have to go fetch water," said a female telecoms worker.

"I wish things were better. The world is moving fast, but we are way behind. It is terrible," she said.

The demand for water has created business for some young people. They fetch it from anywhere and sell it around the city in makeshift wagons.

Residents buy drinking water scooped from hand pumps

The enterprise has become so popular that wagon pushers are now regular road users in Monrovia - and the traffic police recognize them as such.

"There is no work in our country to do - I need to do this to sustain myself," said regular water seller Boakai Karlon, 18.

He pulls a wagon full of water in plastic containers.

"When people pass by me, they say I am too small to push wagons," he said.

"They say this could give me a hernia - but I have to do this because I have to live," he added.

EU role

A small population in Monrovia's main industrial area, Bushrod Island, does receive water from the treatment plant through a small undamaged pipe.

The Liberia Water and Sewage Corporation needs $5,000 to carry out "minimum rehabilitation" on the main 36-inch pipe, according to Managing Director Roger Woodson.

The pipe is responsible for pumping water into central Monrovia and the water plant.

Until two years ago, the European Union helped to truck safe drinking water into overhead tanks for Monrovia residents.

But it has since parked its vehicles.

The EU's Monrovia office recently told the Liberia water company to hire a private entity to continue the water trucking and the EU will underwrite some of the cost.