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A very responsible mother providing clean and safe drinking water for her children

Dec 13

Written by ChildFund Kiribati info（https://childfund.org.ki/blog?author=61899d44914309408f74ff70）

Teeruru is a woman who has been living with her family on Betio for 42 years. She is married and had 6 children: two boys and four girls. She has been working as a cleaner at ministries from the age of 17 and when she was in her 20s, she got married and so she had to resign due to the heavy family commitments. Nowadays Teruru is selling takeaway food at schools to support her family financial daily needs.

Teeruru sees Water scarcity and well water contamination is one of the major issues here on Betio as it is densely populated. Teruru mentioned that most of all households here on Betio use three types of water, Public Utilities Board (PUB) water, well water and rainwater. She really rejects rainwater as to her it is not clean. In her family they use well water for washing dishes and bathing and PUB water for drinking and cooking. Teruru said,

“PUB water is not enough for us because when it runs, we can only get 5 buckets of 20 litres, but this is not enough to cater for the whole family drink for that day and the next day before the PUB water runs again, and the well water is contaminated and brackish. So, we have to manage our drinking water strictly daily.” She continued, “My priorities are my children’s health.”

In the past she never boiled her children’s drinking water because she was told that PUB water has been treated and safe to drink unboiled. So, she has been given her children unpurified water to drink. However, in 2020 ChildFund Kiribati staff did the water testing in her household, and they tested her drinking water. After 3 days the test result was positive which means that the water that she has given her children and the rest of her household members was bacterial. This could be related to the practice in what the house members and herself have taken to care for their water inside the water containers. They might have dipped a bacterial cup inside their water container. This has given Teeruru the greatest fear. However, after being aware of the results, she always boils her children’s drinking water every day, but she still in doubt whether the bacteria are killed or not.