MUGEMBO VILLAGE RAIN WATER HARVESTING SCHEME
Mugembo Village is found on the hill side of Kirimya Town, Kabonera Sub-county, Masaka District Uganda, East Africa. Kirimya Town is estimated to have 1500 homes with an average of 5 people per home. The town has got 20 schools both primary and secondary with an average population of 500 pupils per each school. The town has suffered with inadequate water supply by National water and Sewerage Cooperation the leading supplier of piped water in Uganda. The areas with piped water are unable to have water throughout the year. During drought seasons, water goes missing on taps. As a result community members are leaving in a situation of water scarcity since many are tenants who are unable to have facilities for storing water for a long period. This has made homes to rely on water collected from wells which are a distance of about 2-3 km away from their homes and likely to have contaminated water. Water collection is mainly done by children and women and this has greatly hampered development . Children do not attend schools well since some of the time is devoted to collecting water. Mugembo Village being on the hill hardly receives any pipe water and relies on water collected during the rainy season, bought from homesteads in the valley or that collected from wells and being sold by the youth who use bicycles to traffic the water. Many homes around this hill lack facilities to harvest rain water and when it rains all the water just spill away. Advanced Virtual Education Centre (AVEC) is working hand in hand with LC1 committee of Kirimya Town to see that it constructs an underground water reservoir that would enable to collect rain water that would be able to sustain at least 2 primary schools and 50 homes found in Mugembo Village. The rain water is to be collected from one Primary school (Unique Primary School) and 10 homes situated near the proposed site for constructing the underground tank . The tank is estimated to have 5 circular partitions each of capacity 60,000litres which in total would give a total capacity of 300,000 litres . Each partition is estimated to cost UGX 18,960,000. Eighteen millions, nine hundred sixty thousand Shillings)= USD 5056 The water from the underground tank is to be pumped to a 10,000 litre water reservoir on an 8m stand using a solar pump after which it will be distributed through a network of pipes with the help of gravity to stand points where community members can collect the water.