Essentiality to create of influence group for lobby and advocacy
Rilhena village is the settlement with 280 families from a multi-ethnic group of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim community located in Rilhena GN division in Ratnapur District in Sri Lanka. The poor families in the village works in the estate as the mine workers. They live in the house provided to them by the estate company.
The entire settlement is accessing water from the small water supply project located in Pallegama which does not function well during dry season. As the water supply gets interrupted, the well-off families in the village living in upper area collect water from the source and store it adequately. But the poor families who do not have capacity to store, have to struggle for a bucket of water.
During coronavirus infection followed by lockdown, despite of the awareness about the health protocol, people from the village used the water sources for washing clothes and taking bath. During the period, maintaining health protocol like social distancing, using mask and its disposal was not maintained. The water source was also not safely preserved.
Realizing the issues, the discussion for the preservation of water sources was carried out with the participation of representatives and leaders of the community water supply scheme. Through the discussion focusing on political interest for water and sanitation issues, funding crunch for improving water and sanitation infrastructures etc creation of influence groups within the community to discuss water and sanitation related issues was felt necessary.