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From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
Medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has called on the Benue State Government to provide water for the over 11,000 internally displaced persons IDPs camping at the Ortese IDP camp in the Guma Local Government Area of the state.
MSF Project Coordinator in Benue State Mitch Rhyner, who made the call during a media tour of the facility on Thursday, explained that the organisation has for many months been supplying eight tankers of water to the IDPs in that camp daily.
He said the organisation had tried 13 times to carry out an ecological survey of the area to see whether boreholes can be built to address the water needs of the displaced people to no avail.
Rhyner explained further that it was after all the ecological explorations failed to yield any positive result that the organisation took the decision to transport water tankers from Makurdi to the camp at Ortese at the rate of N3,000 per tanker daily.
‘They should help with water because it’s difficult for us to do water trucking every day. It is outrageously expensive to do water trucking on daily basis. We have also asked the state to provide the water for free,’ Rhyner stated.
‘We feel that we are already doing much. We are paying the drivers, paying for the trucks and the fuel. We will want the state to provide the water. So, we have put that request in an official letter and we are waiting for a response. We haven’t heard from the governor or from the ministry of water resources yet.’
The project coordinator, who also decried the continued stay of the IDPs in a school environment, looked forward to a speedy evacuation of the displaced persons so that normal classes can resume in the school.
‘One consequence of people staying in school is that the school is no longer being used and that is going to be bad for education. One of our goals in our advocacy is to have shuttles being built including shelters so that people can leave the schools and the schools can be used for classes.’
Rhyner who posited that his organisation is already overworked therefore appealed to other organisations to join forces in attending to the needs of the displaced persons at the camp.
‘As you can see, we are overworked. We provide basic health care three times a week; Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We have those tents and there are no sufficient spaces.
‘This place has been here from April and May but we started out intervention in Ortese camp in June, July last year. We intended to stay for three months but because the needs proceed and because others are not providing support, we stayed definitely till this point,’ he stated.
