PROBLEM SITUATION

Klik op het plaatje om een grote versie te bekijken Currently, the people in Ambalgan have a drinking water system (the Barangay Water Supply System: BWSS). There are two aspects to the problem: capacity and quality.

CAPACITY

The current system was built in 1980 for 90 households. With the current 325 households and the fact that no significant maintenance has been carried out during the past 28 years, it is clear that the system has insufficient capacity to provide everybody with water.
The chart shown on the right was created following a house-to-house survey: the red areas denote people who have no water available to them for the entire day, the orange areas denote people who have water for a portion of the day and the blue areas denote people who have a supply of water. Seventy percent of the people do not have access to sufficient drinking water throughout the day. However, it is also the case that the area shown to the top right has absolutely no water. This expansion area is still quite new, but people simply choose not to live there owing to the absence of water (in fact, this area is also a red area). We should also comment that the majority of people, including the poorest people, live in the red areas.

In the practicalities of every day, it is, therefore, the case that the people who live at the end of the system have to wait until the night-time before they can draw water. Or, they try to obtain water from their families or neighbours elsewhere in the village. However, this is only deferring, not solving, the problem.

QUALITY

The water quality was also investigated. The results showed that the water cannot be considered to be healthy or reliable. This is mainly on account of the poor maintenance and management of the system. When water supplies are too low, people fetch water from the river behind the village (in which the cows wander and the people do their washing). The quality of the water in the river is extremely poor, resulting in numerous health risks.

UNDERLYING PROBLEM

In principle, sufficient water is available in the vicinity (river and groundwater). This is not the core problem. The causes of the problems are the mismanagement and lack of maintenance on the current system. However, because of the differences in power and wealth, it is impossible for the 'man on the street' to change this. For that reason, the community has asked Taytayan to provide assistance in building a new system; a system which is transparent, run by the (poor) people themselves, with a reliable and plentiful supply of drinking water.
The greatest challenge is the development of the community, not the technology.

You can read the whole investigation report under downloads. In this report you can read more about the information regarding the current system, the water quality and the research that has been carried out.