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PB: So corruption of water is pervasive, it seems.
JA: That’s not all. Another element of water corruption involves the exaggeration of the cost of water equipment. Some providers under government contract to bring water to a locality have been found to charge ten times the amount the installation actually should cost. Others have gone to local community members and asked them to contribute money so that the government can bring water to the community, even though the government already is compensating the contractor through taxes paid by that same community.
Hoarding
PB: Is the situation any different in the rural areas?
JA: Wealthy chiefs and political cronies have money to buy canned or imported water to drink. But in most rural villages, 90% of people rely on streams and springs for their own drinking water and to water their cattle. In most rural areas, people have to walk for long distances to get water. They have to carry all their dirty clothes and dishes to wash them. People have to take their baths at the stream, and women bathe their children there, and then carry the basins of washed clothes, water and children on their backs, even while climbing hills, to get home. But there is probably less infection in the water there because of lack of industry means lower rates of pollution.
I travelled recently in the Northern provinces of Cameroon where the desert governs. There we have only a few natural marshy areas where water can be found throughout the entire year. The wealthy and influential cattle owners, chiefs and political bigwigs monopolize these precious water supplies for their cattle. The poor must transport water for cattle from manmade standing pools or manage to drive their cattle to the marshes after the rich landowners have watered their cattle.
The Health Toll
PB: It sounds like the corruption of water is taking a severe toll on the people of Cameroon.
JA: Yes. As a result of the corruption of water, diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid are rampant in our country and throughout most of Africa. A recent outbreak of cholera sent hundreds to the hospital and killed several in Douala, Cameroon. When a family member becomes ill from one of these diseases, families are forced to spend their meager financial reserves in the ill-equipped and corrupt hospitals. If you don’t die from these diseases, they wreak havoc on your body so that you are never as strong as you were before. Either way, the health impacts quickly become economic impacts when families become so financially stretched that they are unable to afford the expenses of sending their children to school.
The Bigger Picture - Stagnation
PB: How do you see water corruption affecting your country’s progress?
JA: Remember that these people constitute the work force of our country. It is therefore clear that this country and many African countries are forced to remain behind because those who ought to be the working force are weakened physically, financially and emotionally. The majority are in such ill-health that they cannot work effectively to build the nation.
PB: The leaders seem to be very myopic by only focusing on their own standard of living instead of improving the overall standard of living. What is the solution, in your view?
JA: There are many, many efforts to ensure access to clean water and none have yet succeeded because they try to operate within the current corrupt systems. While most Cameroonians are so disgusted about this pervasive corruption that they have no interest in politics, I believe the solution is a political one. I believe that this kind of entrenched corruption can only be eliminated by turning the system upside down and giving ordinary, working people the power to control the country’s decision-making. If ordinary people made the decisions, of course everyone would have potable water. That’s why I am a proponent of a radical system that would give poor people larger votes than wealthy people.
PB: That sounds like a very difficult and long process when the need is so immediate.
JA: Not as difficult as it is to manage the one-person-one-vote model of democracy today. In Cameroon, many people say, “The voters decide nothing. Those that count the vote decide everything.” But vote sizing would change that too because it’s a total restructuring of the system. It’s designed, primarily, to heed the cries of poorer, working and middle class citizens who are the ones who suffer most from water corruption and all the other forms of corruption reigning in our country.
