The National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Commission has urged all water companies and producers of commercial water to submit samples of their locally produced water for laboratory testing by the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL).
The Chief Executive Officer of the WASH Commission, Bobby Whitfield, said amid the COVID-19 pandemic, safe-drinking water remains citizens’ first priority for their health.
“We will be partnering with NPHIL to carry on this initiative and as part of our routine service to ensure that water being sold to our population is of best quality,” Commissioner Whitfield asserted.
“As I speak to you now, work is in the pipeline by the WASH Commission to sign a MoU with NPHIL so that every water-producing company in the country can test their water on a regular three month basis,” he said.
The WASH boss made these assertions at a press conference last Tuesday in Sinkor, adding that the results will be submitted to the WASH Commission from the NPHIL after such testing process.
“We are asking you to start submitting sample of your water to NPHIL for quality testing and we will issue you a certificate if your water is good to be on the market, but if it is not safe for drinking the WASH Commission will waste no time to take your water off the market,” The WASH Commission CEO added.
He at the same time said, inspectors of the WASH Commission will be going out to monitor and enforce the hand-washing protocol, and data collection, nothing that the data they will collect will point out the number of people that are washing their hands during the fight against COVID-19.
He emphasized that this is very important to know how many people are responding to this protocol, stressing that this measure has got to be enforced by citizens because failure to do so, WASH inspectors will enforce same.
“You don’t want to be embarrassed so we all need to work in order to do the right thing. We want to make sure that businesses are doing the right thing and we’re going to be working with service providers to fumigate public areas,” Whitfield stated.
The WASH Commission CEO explained that the disinfected substance is never meant to harm anyone, stating that some of the sprays look like water and smoke and as such, they will be working with partners in the WASH pillow to continue this routine exercise.
“We cannot be fighting COVID-19 and neglect some crucial services in our community to get these services back up.”
“We are asking our partners to provide funding to ensure that they are repairing broken down hand pumps,” he noted.