Adidome (Volta River), 14 April ?99 ?

Forty communities in the North Tongu district of the Volta region are to benefit from a 127,000-dollar water project initiated by the Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT), an NGO based in India. The project, which uses slow sand filter water treatment plants, is situated at Dekpoe Tedeafenui and Zongo Adiekpe. Mr Jose Eduardo Lopez, Director of the organisation, said they are collaborating with the Volta Region Rural and Sanitation Programme, a Danish project under the district assembly, to construct water distribution systems. He said the Dekpoe Tedeafenui project will serve 10 communities with a population of over 4,000 while the second project at Zongo Adiekpe will serve 30 communities. Mr Lopez said they received 27,000 dollars from Africa 2000 Network of UNDP to construct an irrigation dam at Dekpoe Zongo. He said the people are supporting the organisation with communal labour while the beneficiary communities are levied various sums of monies to pay the caretaker's allowance. The director said his organization first came into contact with the communities in the late ?80s they supplied the people with relief items following a flooding of the area. "We were actually moved by the plight of these communities at the time. We realised that the only good drinking water in the area was contaminated with guinea worm. "More than 75 per cent of the people were infected with guinea worm and we had to educate them on the need to have a good drinking water." Lopez said after the completion of the first project, the rate of guinea worm infection dropped to 10 per cent and expressed the hope that the second project would be completed by the end of the year.