I drink 40 sachets of water daily – Stone crusher

Stone crushers in Nasarawa State spend the whole day in the field breaking rock under the scorching sun, so their consumption of water is out of the ordinary, due to dehydration. A labourer who has been crushing stone at Gidan Waya, Nasarawa Eggon hills in Nasarawa State, claimed he drinks two packs of sachet water, […]

Stone crushers in Nasarawa State spend the whole day in the field breaking rock under the scorching sun, so their consumption of water is out of the ordinary, due to dehydration.

A labourer who has been crushing stone at Gidan Waya, Nasarawa Eggon hills in Nasarawa State, claimed he drinks two packs of sachet water, approximately 40 litres of water daily.

The weather in Lafia and its environs sometimes exceeds 45 degrees centigrade before the commencement of the rainy season.

The village chief, who is also a stone crusher, Yakubu Zaki said, “I have been crushing stones for more than a decade, even when I became the traditional head of the village. We have many labourers who work here, but the scorching sun among other factors affect the way we work. We eat a lot of food and drink a lot of water due to the heat. We also suffer injuries to our hands from flying stone particles in the process of the work.”

He said they start their day by preparing well – buying food, drugs and most importantly, water.

Yakubu Zaki said he consumes two packs of sachet water daily, each sachet contains 20 small sachets.

Indeed, water is a major demand of the labourers. They said they stock water which they keep within arm’s reach to quench ever-present thirst and to avoid losing man-hours moving to and fro to fetch water, which is not readily available.

Most of the labourers said they consume large quantity of water during fieldwork which they continue far into the evening due to dehydration.

The most interesting thing about these labourers is their determination and hard work, as they work every day without any holiday because, they explained, any day they did not work, they feel weak the following morning.

Most of them said, they start their day by eating a large amount of food, drinking a lot of water and, especially the younger ones, taking drugs to give them the energy needed to manually crush stones.

The village head added “We in this community crush stones; some do this trade for a living and some to supplement their other means of livelihood.

“This quarry is called Broni after a construction company. Broni Prono had used modern equipment and excavated stones it used in paving the Akwanga to Lafia road and when they left, we took over the quarry but using manual labour to earn a living,” the chief explained.