Women in Yei River County in Central Equatoria State say they are being raped while fetching clean drinking water from boreholes.

They say there are a few boreholes in the county, forcing them to wake up early in the morning and line up to get the water.

The women say they face harassment while searching for the water.

“We have only one borehole. Early in the morning when you are going to the borehole, some men who were from the disco are standing at the boreholes,” one woman told Eye Radio.

“They will start catching you. You will be running on your own. Those they have caught, they will sleep with them,” she said.

The women say that as schools will soon open; the challenge of getting water will be even bigger, exposing them to more chances of rape.

“Our children need water to wash up. All these are very hard. We need water,” said one.
“We wake up at 2 am to 3 am searching for water, sometimes if you are not strong, you will get water at around 8 Am,” said another.

The Assistant Commissioner for Rural Water and Sanitation, Juma Hassan, say the county authorities could not drill more boreholes due to shortage of funds.

“We don’t have machines for drilling boreholes, we depend on implementing partners and the prices for bore holes are high,” Mr Juma said, adding that a borehole takes about 60,000 SSP (about $19,000 on the official bank rate) to drill. “We don’t have enough funds for drilling bore holes.”

A report by Juma’s department says most of the boreholes drilled using the Constituency Development Fund are damaged, both in rural and urban areas.