Letefoho, November 30, 2024 (Média Democracia) – The Leubasa community is very happy with the water conservation efforts carried out by the TILOFE group because it can revive the springs that are currently starting to diminish, so that the community can access water even though it is far away. This was conveyed by the Head of Leubasa Sub-village, Alfredo Maia Pires to reporters in Leubasa.
The Head of Leubasa Sub-village, Alfredo Pires, expressed his gratitude to the Tilofe Group for its spring conservation program so that it can help the community in accessing clean water, because so far, the community in the area has had great difficulty accessing clean water due to the long distance from spring.
“In the past, people did not know how to access clean water during the long dry season and until now people have difficulty accessing clean water to meet their daily needs, when the Tilofe program was running to collect water, so now the water has started to provide benefits to the community and until now people are still using water, previously in August and September the water had started to dry up, but now it is November but there is still water.” Said the Head of Sub-village.
He emphasized that previously, the people of Leubasa Sub-village had great difficulty in accessing clean water due to minimal knowledge about water conservation, but with the presence of the Tilofe Group which created a water planting program, the people in the area were able to access clean water.
“When the Tilofe group had not created this program, we did not know about water conservation, so we could not do water conservation, but after this program, the community already knew about water conservation which could help the community, so that until now we can revive the springs until now.” He said.
Water that has been saved through conservation of rainwater that falls to the ground to be filtered so that it can provide life for the other springs so that it can be offered to the people of 4 sub-villages.
On that occasion, Abrão Maia as the Chairperson of the Youth Movement said that this water conservation activity started with the Tilofe group since 2021 because they received training from Permatil so that they carried it out in villages and sub-villages.
“Starting in 2021 until now, we have received guidance from Permatil on water conservation actions by collaborating with Tilofe. The purpose of this water conservation is to prevent the risk of degradation of erosion including flooding. Therefore, the benefit of this water conservation is to revive other springs so that people can access water properly for their lives and people can use it in the long summer.” He said.
He added that this water conservation movement consisted of 17 young people to carry out water conservation activities on hydrodynamics based on filter springs.
“We from the Water Conservation Youth Movement which has 17 members, so far the water we conserve is rainwater or collect rainwater and talk about hydrodynamics based on three places, namely first natural dust, second the sea and third the atmosphere. We talk about hydrodynamics based on natural dust, it captures rainwater from the highlands to be filtered into dust so that it can provide life for springs.” He said
While the natural dust that is being conserved is 9, the new dust in the form of cultural arts is 74 with a total of 88 dust. In addition, this group also collaborates with Tilofe to conserve water and also plant pine trees, bamboo, near preserved springs such as the saren spring, Aipun spring, Tuhuguan spring, Kolimaufahi spring, Biguru spring, Haehbehan spring including the Rehien Manpnian spring, this spring provides life from the Alosai spring.
He was further explained that the Leubasa Sub-village community in Ermera Municipality consists of 116 houses, with a population of 468 people consisting of 250 men and 218 women.
In addition, this information was accessed by journalists through their participation in the Media Tour program in which AJTL collaborated with Oxfam in Timor-Leste and received financial support from Oxfam Hong Kong.
Reported by : Estefania
Picture by : Estefania