Residents of Rongai sub-county are on the spot over vandalism after the chief engineer and environmentalist raised a red flag on the number of burst and leaking water pipes in the area.
Speaking while on a tour on the water conservation project in the area on Wednesday, Nelson Maara expressed regret of how the project had been subjected to vandalism and destruction with less than four months of use.
“It’s sad that pipes have been seriously destroyed, joints disconnected leaving water freely flowing along different roads,” he noted.
“This project was constructed in this area because of your continuous complaints of lack of the important commodity but it seems you didn’t notice that,” he added.
The Sh4 million project was facilitated by the Nakuru County government in collaboration with the National Water Conservation Consortium together with the Pipeline Corporation.
Two dams were constructed to necessitate easy facilitation of piped water to schools, hospitals, public places like markets and even homes.
“Our homes are now catered for, our schools, hospitals and churches were all served but with such irregularities, don’t you think it’s discouraging any other probable investor in this area,” Maara noted.
He called on the local administration to help ensure that the culprits face the full arm of the law saying that innocent people were suffering because of some people out to fulfil their selfish individual demands.
“We are told that some people are vandalising the pipes to sell them to scrape metal dealers in town, all of us must take the initiative of stopping this because we all need water in our homes,” he said.
The area has been without a constant supply of the important commodity for a long period but the county government came to its rescue in 2014 with the two dams being constructed.