Vusama Village Celebrate Access to Clean Tap Water
“This is a great project, just like those who live in towns. Truly no Fijian is left behind.”
Saturday 05 April 2025 | 14:08
Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Works Ro Filipe Tuisawau, with villagers of Vusama in Nadroga after the commissioning of their tap water on April 3, 2025. Photo: Waisea Nasokia
There was a celebration on Thursday at Vusama Village in Nadroga after the commissioning of their tap water system by the Minister for Public Works, Ro Filipe Tuisawau.
This ended decades of fetching water daily from boreholes and wells.
Mereani Roro, 47, was among emotional villagers, for the first time, drank from the tap.
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“We thank God and the Government. This is for the first time we are getting fresh water from the tap which we have been longing for a long time. We previously used water from wells,” she said.
“This is a great project, just like those who live in towns. Truly no Fijian is left behind.”
Village headman Sakiusa Nagata said prior to the development, villagers would use wooden sleighs of bullock-pulled carts to fetch water from nearby water sources.
Ro Filipe said the development would help villagers better their living conditions.
“I understand that they (villagers) had been having health issues in terms of various waterborne diseases and at one stage the Ministry of Health declared the at-risk village in terms of waterborne diseases,” he said.
“This is one of the roles of Government to ensure that people have access to treated water which is of a quality where it doesn’t have waterborne diseases.
“Probably there some areas which are lacking, and we are working hard to fix them in terms of the Water Strategy 2050, so that gives us a clear guideline moving forward in terms of water needs,” he said.
He said Government could not finance everything, so there was a need to have a framework with a private sector in financing infrastructure developments related to investments, whether it’s hotels or independent power producers or other sectors of the economy.
Government is looking at various sources of water, in terms of boreholes and desalination plants powered by renewable energy source.
“Solar-powered borehole pumps and solar-powered desalination plants are some of the projects we are working on.”
He said Government depended on the private sector.
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