In Summary: Recently, the head of a civil society group in the WASH sector Timothy Kpeh claimed during a press conference that 25% of Liberia’s population lacks access to safe drinking water, we have fact-checked this claim and found that data to be less than the data released by LISGIS.
On August 8 the Executive Director of the United Youth, Sanitation and Water for ALL claimed that 25% of Liberians lacks safe drinking water.
Timothy Kpeh made the claim in a press conference while thanking President Joseph N. Boakai and the Legislature for the nomination and confirmation of the head of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Commission.
Claim
“We all know that 25% of our country’s population still suffer from the lack of safe drinking water”.
Rating Justification
Mr. Kpeh told LVL Fact Checking Desk that the source he relied on to make the claim was the Joint Monitoring Program’s current data on Liberia.
We reviewed the source and found that it is the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) program implemented by UNICEF for 121 countries. The JMP data are based on estimates calculated from data produced by national authorities.
The latest data on drinking water services in Liberia covers the year 2022 which puts the percentage of the population using at least basic drinking water sources at 75.61%.
The report defines access to basic drinking water sources as the percentage of the population using an improved drinking water source, where collection time is not more than 30 minutes for a round trip including queuing.
However, the survey considers rainwater and protected springs as part of improved drinking water sources.
To further fact-check this claim, we reviewed the 2022 National Housing and Population Census report published on the website of the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LIGIS) – the official source of national statistics for Liberia.
Page 64 of the report shows that 70% of the population has access to safe drinking water sources while 30% lacks safe drinking water.
The statistics divide access to drinking water into two categories: improved and unimproved sources. The report defines improved drinking water sources as “pipe water, borehole, satchel water, bottled water, and protected wells.”
Conclusion
Based on this, we conclude that the claim by the Executive Director of United Youth Sanitation and Water for All that 25% of Liberia’s population lacks safe drinking water based on the JMP data is mostly correct. The JMP data shows that 24.39% of the population lacks access to improved drinking water.
However, LISGIS data put the percentage of the population having access to “improved drinking water source” at 70%. This means about 30% of the population lacks access to improved sources of drinking water and not 25% as claimed in the JMP report relied upon by Mr. Kpeh to make the claim.
This report is produced with funding from the USAID Media Activity. The funder has No say in the editorial decisions leading to the production of this content