Community- based management
Where have all the committees gone?
Mr Chary* is the secretary of one of the Gram Panchayats (lowest level of elected government in India) in the north eastern part of Tamil Nadu. Full of pride, he shows the pump house and the overhead tank, and explains the work of the operator who keeps the pump running, maintains the tank and chlorinates […]
Who serves the in-betweeners?
By: Marieke Adank, IRC Small towns and peri-urban areas are by definition found in the grey area in between the truly urban and the truly rural. Also in terms of water supply, fifty shades of grey are found in these types of settlements. People living here often fall in between the cracks of urban utilities […]
Stockholm syndrome
For obvious reasons, Sweden and Stockholm have inspired several WASH bloggers this month, drawing analogies between the WASH sector and Swedish smörgåsbord and the Vasa ship. As a Stockholm resident, I can only be very satisfied with such inspiration. But, I must admit that initially I was not very inspired by this year’s World Water […]
The caretaker always SMSes twice
The costs of getting spare parts for handpumps can sometimes be higher than the costs of the spares themselves. Imagine a handpump where some of the nuts of bolts have worn out. These might cost a dollar at a spare part retail dealer; but the bus ticket to town might cost three dollars. That is […]
Flying the flag – but breaking the pump?
One of the topics of discussion during this week’s Triple-S annual meeting was around harmonization of approaches to rural water supply between donors and governments. Presenting the experiences in Ghana, Vida Duti presented this nice map, showing which donors operate in which part of the country. One could interpret this map in a positive way; […]
A bit short of a miracle …
By Patrick Moriarty and John Sauer What is it that IADB’s Max Valasquez Matute in Honduras finds ‘only a bit short of a miracle’? The decision by seven INGOs to align their programming in Honduras in support of an Everyone Forever movement aimed at delivering full coverage in sustainable rural water, sanitation and hygiene services. […]
Islands of success
Sagar is an island at the mouth of the river Ganges where it meets the Bay of Bengal. Every year in January, about half a million pilgrims visit the island to worship at the holy Ganges. The hundreds of mobile toilet units standing on the empty festival terrain during the rest of the year are […]
Community-based management is dead; long live community-based management
Last week, we had our first Triple-S research seminar, discussing the first findings from the assessments of service provision around point sources in Ghana and Uganda. Although I had seen a sneak preview of some of the data, the consolidated results were shocking. After seeing them, I was tempted to declare community-based management (particularly of […]
Philippines: toolbox for rural water utilities launched
The Philippine government – together with the World Bank, the United Nations through the Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund (MDG-F) and other development partners – have launched a ‘local water governance toolbox’. The toolbox is aimed at small-scale water service providers (SSWPs) with less than 5,000 connections. Otherwise known as “Tubig Yaman,” this new set […]
Is rural water supply a left-wing hobby?
The latest trend in Dutch politics is to label anything of parties of another political colour as hobbyism. It started with one of the parties to the right of the political spectrum denouncing activities such as subsidizing theatre, development cooperation and promoting green energy as left-wing hobbies. The parties to the left couldn’t stay behind […]
Hundred years of sustainability
How long is sustainable? 5 years? 20 years? 100 years? From here to eternity? This is a relevant question to ask in the context of rural water supplies, where the quest for sustainability has been going on for as long as modern water supplies have been developed. As engineers, we have often talked in terms […]
water services that last 
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