Every morning at 3:00 am, long before the sun rises over the rolling hills of Pajule Sub-county, 19-year-old Brenda Lakot trudges two kilometres into a pitch-black valley carrying a 20-litre yellow jerrycan. Her destination is not a borehole or a protected spring, but a shallow, stagnant stream shared by three villages and domestic livestock.
The water Lakot draws is murky brown, dotted with insect larvae, and carries a faint sulphurous stench. Yet for Lakot and more than 600 residents of Palenga Aywee Village in Pader District, this contaminated pool has been their sole water source for nearly two decades.
‘We strain it through a cloth, but the children still get sick,’ says Lakot’s mother, 42-year-old Santa Akello, gesturing toward a red, scaly rash covering her seven-year-old son’s legs. ‘Every month it is the same thing: diarrhoea, skin itching, or red eyes. We left the IDP camps in 2007 to come home and rebuild our lives, but how do you rebuild when the water you drink makes your family sick?’
In 2007, thousands of families packed up their belongings and exited Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps across northern Uganda following the cessation of hostilities. At the time, the government and international development partners pledged comprehensive reconstruction, basic service delivery, and rural development. Billions of shillings subsequently flowed into the region through flagship recovery initiatives such as the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) and the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF).
Nineteen years later, Palenga Aywee stands as a stark indictment of the deep equity gaps hidden beneath Uganda’s post-conflict success story. Official figures from the Ministry of Water and Environment estimate rural water coverage in Pader District at over 70 percent. Yet, an entire generation in Palenga Aywee has grown up drinking untreated surface water, resulting in recurring disease outbreaks, overwhelming local health facilities, and fostering a deep sense of institutional abandonment.
The human toll of this crisis is felt directly at Pajule Health Centre IV. A health worker at the facility, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to address the press, revealed that waterborne illnesses account for a staggering share of weekly outpatient visits from Pajule Sub-county, dominated by cases of acute diarrhoea, amoebiasis, and severe bacterial skin and eye infections.
‘When communities drink from open surface streams, you are fighting a losing battle against infectious diseases,’ explained a clinical officer at the health centre. ‘We prescribe antibiotics and ointments, but patients return two weeks later because they go home to the very same contaminated water. The ultimate cure isn’t sitting in our pharmacy; it’s a clean water point in the village.’
For school-going youths like Lakot, the burden extends beyond physical health into the classroom. During the dry season, fetching water takes up to three hours every morning, causing chronic lateness, physical exhaustion, and missed instructional time.
Binborn Kimara, the LC1 chairperson of Palenga Aywee, noted that local leaders have formally petitioned the Pajule Sub-county Council and the Pader District Local Government in nearly every annual planning cycle since 2008 without success.
‘Each year, we are told our village has been prioritised for the next financial year’s District Water and Sanitation Development Conditional Grant,’ Kimara lamented. ‘It is always in vain, as each year the drilling rigs go somewhere else.’
Palenga Aywee’s plight reflects a wider systemic breakdown across Pader, where residents in 793 villages still depend on unprotected sources for daily domestic use. Alfred Okello, the Pajule Sub-county chairperson, confirmed that his office recently reached out to World Vision, a non-governmental development partner operating in the area, to request intervention for a new borehole.
Pader District Water Officer Patrick Olanya admitted that out of the district’s 877 villages, only 84 currently enjoy reliable access to clean water, citing severely constrained local government budgets. Olanya added that out of 1,350 total domestic water points across the district, nearly 280 boreholes and shallow wells have been non-functional for over five years and are now classified as abandoned due to technical breakdowns, poor water quality, or depleted water tables.
The crisis spans the entire Acholi sub-region. While approximately 87 percent of households across the sub-region rely nominally on boreholes, spring wells, and protected water points, widespread breakdown and long-term abandonment leave communities stranded.
In neighbouring Agago District, where overall rural water coverage is reported at 85 percent and urban coverage at 75 percent, District Water Officer Emmanuel Oroma acknowledged that roughly 33 percent of households still lack functional access. Out of Agago’s 1,402 domestic water points, 627 stand abandoned and non-functional.
A similar pattern persists across other districts in the sub-region.
In Omoro District, despite an official coverage rate of 95 percent, about 25 percent of the district’s 121 villages struggle for clean water, with 426 of its 745 water points abandoned. In Nwoya District, official coverage drops to a critical low of 39 percent, with 168 of 621 water points out of service. Meanwhile, in Kitgum District, where coverage stands at 83 percent, District Water Officer Willy Picho confirmed that 116 villages-representing roughly 20 percent of local households-continue to draw water from unsafe sources daily.