By Hassan I. Conteh (Editor)

Kadiatu, a 10-year- old girl and her younger sister are moving to a far stream to get water after school.

She  does this almost every day immediately she off from school.

While Kadiatu attends a primary school at York Road in Waterloo, her sister is  home.

“Mum don’t have money to enable her to go to school ” she explains.

Young girls like Kadiatu in York road usually get water from swamp-wells and dug out wells built  in communities around.

Here in Western Area Rural District, access to clean water is a challenging problem for households.

It is hard to access clean water for drinking and bathing. This is  affecting children a lot  especially infant girls and boys who go to school.

Instead of children being at home to do their homework, they walk around sometimes in group to look out for water to be used at their various homes.

Nearly, out of five houses  three have a dug out well at home, a situation that shows the severity of the problem.

Asked about her progress in school, Kadiatu told us she is in class five.

And girls like her age sometimes  don’t better prepare themselves for class exams.

Since access to clean water is a trouble for parents, young girls mostly go out fetching water on their behalf.

As a result, children are not pressed hard by their parents with their studies.

But they are often forced to fetch water for domestic use.

Kadiatu’s friend, Rugie, was caught up carrying her sixth-turn of a five-gallon water on her way home.

She is expected to complete her fifth times a gallon per day.

The fatigue is well- noticed on her but she endures to go over for another.

At a well at York Road’s swamp close to Waterloo market, a girl at Kadiatu’s age was  seriously being beaten up by a supposed parent or guardian.

The woman severally ignores advice by women- launderers who halt her to stop beating up the child  whose relationship with the little girl  couldn’t be ascertained.

The reason for the girl’s flogging was because she had stayed up too long at the swamp-well.

The swamp- well is very important for community people especially women and girls at York Road.

But it’s used for laundering and cooking purposes only.

The dug out wells are used for drinking purposes by residents.

However, most wells are dirty and many get dry up in middle of every dry season.

Acess to clean water seriously affects Sierra Leoneans who live in  cities and bigger towns.

And the cost is high on infant girls and boys as it hugely accounts to children’s poor growth and school-work.