Patterns of pipe-borne water supply in the Buea Municipality: Challenges and way forward

Abstract

A growing quest in the mind of man today is to establish a balance equation between his activities and the available freshwater. Trillion of dollars have been spent worldwide to reduce water shortages, but governments and stakeholders ubiquitously have failed to empower the city dwellers and to ambush the challenges to pipe borne water supply. In many parts of developing countries including Cameroon, population growth , urbanization and water demands are rising rapidly, whereas water availability, quality, reliability, frequency and distribution are decreasing rapidly due to planning deficiencies, inefficient management and deterioration. This study aimed at examining the patterns of pipe borne water supply in the Buea Municipality, challenges and municipal response. A sample size of 120 inhabitants was taken to represent the entire population in the study area. Simple random sampling technique was then used to identify the most appropriate respondents and locations. Findings were analyzed using Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS), Microsoft excel and represented in the form of tables and figures. Findings revealed that, there is limited water supply reliability, access and distribution in the Buea Municipality attributed to physical and anthropological influences such as inadequate water supply, degradation and poor water management by the municipal authorities. The study look forward to giving recommendations of the use of water storage devices such as water tanks as a short term strategy and the extension of pipes distribution lines to be in direct proportion with population growth among others.

Portable Water Shortages on Households in Bomaka in the Buea Municipality, South West Region of Cameroon: Challenges and Coping Strategies

“…This was followed by community taps, springs and wells. This was in contrast with the study of Baba et al, (2019), who noted that pipe borne water was the major water source in the Buea Municipality. Further investigations showed that most of the individuals cannot boost of 20 litres of water daily and many of them traveled over 1km distance in search of portable water.…”

“…These findings were in line with that of WHO (2012) who in assessing water quality and the associated health risks in the city of Yaounde, noted that 50% of the diseases in the area were airborne diseases caused be inadequate portable water. Baba et al (2019) also noted that poor sanitation was also one of the most devastating effects of water shortages worldwide.…”

“…It has been estimated that every year, nearly 1 Million people die due to water shortages that often resulted to the development of water borne diseases. In addition, more that 37.7 million people are affected by water borne diseases, 1.5 million children are estimated to die of diarrhea alone, and 73 million working days are lost due to waterborne diseases annually (Gambbir, 2012 andBaba et al, 2019). Water shortages are also at its peak in some major cities in Cameroon such as Douala and Yaounde beside towns like Buea and Limbe.…”

Analysis of Household Daily Water Consumption Dynamics in the Tropical Environment

“…Te respondents believed that their closeness to water source is signifcant to the pattern of their daily water demand as shown in Table 2. Te authors of [51][52][53] had reported that one of the factors that infuence household water use is the distance from the source of water. When respondents have short distance to cover in getting potable water for home use, there is possibility that more volume of water will be used in homes.…”