The facility is estimated to pump up to about 10,000 gallons per hour into an overhead tank from where residents can fetch the water.

It took the intervention of Team Embak - a student team from the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, emerged winners at last year’s Community Service Award (CSA) to ensure residents of Duta enjoy quality and potable water after several years of battling with unsafe drinking water due to cement pollution from activities of Diamond Cement located near the community.

Follwing the success of this project, Team Embak expects that the members of the community will have the capacity to carry out their day-to-day activities such as cooking, washing, bathing and so on with no problems whatsoever about the quality of water they are using.

Additionally, they expect that, the community members will be relieved of the burden of having to walk several kilometres to access potable water instead channel that time into other productive activities.

Meanwhile, Team Embak also disclosed to the people of Duta that their stakeholder meetings with the Diamond Cement Factory yielded another positive result adding that the General Manager, Mr T. Ramarao revealed to them that the factory would also provide similar projects in the other three (3) sub communities (Agbawoeme-Zogbe, Ahiatakukope and Demadikope).

It is worth stating that the intervention by Team Embak is in line with the Community Service Award that aim at cultivating a spirit of volunteerism and community service among young people.

Rev. Moses Asafo, Head Pastor of Assemblies of God Church, Aflao stressed the need to adopt effective maintenance culture and ask the people to show a good example to other communities to also follow.

BACKGROUND

Two years ago, Duta community was captured on a documentary by Joy news themed; “CANDIDATES FOR DEATH” on the incident of cement dust pollution from the Diamond cement factory.

As a result of this, efforts were made to relocate this community from its old settlement which is situated very close to the factory.

This migration was largely unsuccessful as most of the community members were left not catered for in this operation, thus, compelling members of the community to continue to reside in their old settlement with a double problem of absence of fresh air and now, clean water.

Initially, the community depended largely on rain water to survive.                        

A well was their next alternative but that also has been compromised as the cement dust pollutes this open source of water overnight leaving the community to suffer greatly from the absence of potable water.

In an interview with some natives of the community, they made it clear that in order to have access to potable water; one would have to spend a fortune and a good amount of time walking several kilometres to the Republic of Togo to fetch water. Due to the stress involved, most people continue to risk their health by depending on the contaminated water found in Duta.                        

But there story was about to change when Team Embak visited the community last year and spent about 8 hours to look for problems in this community.
Their work identified the following challenges:
1. Poor road network with gullies and pot roads  
2. Water problem
3. Cement dust pollution
4. Other health related problem                        

The team therefore took the decision to assist with available resources at their disposal. So with limited resources and their believe in the saying that “Water is Life”, they decided to construct a modern mechanized borehole in the community which will pump up to about 10,000 gallons per hour into an overhead tank, from where residents can fetch the water.  

THE COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD

The Community Service Award is the biggest platform in Ghana for tertiary students to exhibit volunteerism and patriotism as their contribution towards national development.

It was initiated in March 2014 by Osei-Kusi Foundation (OKF) and Selfless 4Africa Inc, (S4A) with the aim of cultivating a spirit of volunteerism and community service among young people.

Embak, a student team from the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, emerged winners at last year’s Community Service Award (CSA) held at the University of Ghana: Faculty of Law with representations from University of Cape Coast, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Regional Maritime University, Valley View University, University of Health and Allied Sciences and the host, University of Ghana.

At the end of the rounds, the 7 member team of Judges scored in favour of EMBAK from UHAS crowning them the winners with a cash prize of GHC 10,000.00, GHC 5,000.00 from the Foundation Vice Chancellor Prof. Fred Newton Binka and GHC 500.00 from Rev. Moses Asafo to implement this project.                        

Members of team EMBAK include Maame Afua Kpodo-Tay, Baba Abdul Hakim, Wannah Vog-Enga Ernest, Johnfiah Akua Diana and Mr Kporha Divine.