Operation & Maintenance (O&M) are not for free
A new handpump will not work for ever, with time some part will wear out and need to be replaced. Therefore, technical know-how need to be availble for maintenance and repairs when the pump breaks down.

But the NGOs that donated the pumps to communities did not like the idea that people or somebody should pay for the repairs; they promoted the idea that "water should be free".

To this aim, already over 25 years ago, development organizations developed the VLOM approach. VLOM stands for: Village Level Operated & Maintained. The basic starting point of the VLOM approach is that the users should do the maintenance, so no cost would be involved. This sounds nice, but in practise it became clear that this was easier said than done. Repairs usually become more complicated and expensive after some years and spare parts are often hard to find and had to be paid for.

In the VLOM approach, it was also assumed that the key issue was to make the community feel that it was "their' own handpump. It was argued  that as long as the community has a "sense of ownership", they will feel more responsible and therefore will automatically be more motivated to maintain "their" handpump. However, having some "ownership" is nice, but just looking to your "own handpump" did not provide the needed funds for the costly repairs, so also this did not lead to sustainable handpump O&M practice.

Indeed, some "example" show-case communities could do this for a while, especially in shallow boreholes, but the reality all over Africa is different. The result is that, today, in most cases, 1 out of 2 of these VLOM handpumps are now abandoned. Especially handpumps in deep boreholes break down very often and are abandoned (70 to 90%). Statistics are hard to beat, although some NGOs and donors still try to denie this. It is expected that within 10 years most VLOM handpumps in Africa will be broken down.

Reliability is the key to sustainability
Studies show that the main problem of these VLOM handpumps (often mass produced in India) is due to the fact that they are not designed for heavy duty day-in day-out pumping in African rural communities and need to many spare parts. The obvious advantage for NGOs that donate these India pumps is that they are cheap, the disadvantage is that they break down all the time (sometimes already within a few weeks).

The VLOM pumps need many spares that are typically made for these pumps, but are not available on the local market, or for a very high price, because they become scarce! 

The FairWater BluePump alternative
Technology matters and indeed plays an important role. To avoid the irritations of the never ending breakdowns, the BluePump has been designed to be the most reliable handpump on the market. In fact, basically the BluePump does not need spares to function. Maintenance is limited to regular check on nuts and bolts. Besides, the maintenance of the FairWater BluePump is also organized in a modern and private sector approach; reliable water for less than 5 US$ per family per year.

Sustainable water supply for the lowest price
Because of the simplicity and reliability of the BluePump, breakdowns are rare and can easily be resolved without having to use many expensive spares. Therefore the BluePump repairs should in practice normally be done for a low and fixed price. The BluePump A-B-C concept therefore makes the BluePump the cheapest to operate & maintain handpump for community water supply.

 

A check-up of a BluePump in Mozambique by the local company "BlueZone", the country dealer for the BluePump.
(this is an UNICEF sponsored BluePump, at a depth of 67m. deep, providing water for about 2.000 people on a daily basis)

...

Handpump Operation & Maintenance (O&M)
Everybody can understand, that a new handpump will not work for ever, with time some part may come loose or wear out and need to be replaced. Therefore, technical know-how and support will be needed sooner or later for maintenance or for repairs when the pump breaks down.

However, some some 20 years ago, development organizations developed the VLOM approach. VLOM stands for: Village Level Operated & Maintained. The basic idea of the VLOM approach is that the users should be responsible for the maintenance of the pump. This sounds logic, but in practise it became clear that this was easier said than done. Repairs usually become more complicated and expensive after some years and spare parts are often hard to find. It it therefor no surprise that the VLOM approach did not work and that most VLOM handpumps are abandoned after a while.

In the VLOM approach, it was also assumed that if the community has a "sense of ownership", they will feel more responsible and therefore will automatically be more motivated to maintain "their" handpump. However, in practise also this assumption did not lead to sustainable handpump O&M practice.

Indeed, some "example" show-case communities could do this, especially in shallow boreholes and when the NGO is still around. But the reality all over Africa is different. The result is that, today, in most countries 40% to 60% of these VLOM handpumps are now abandoned. It is expected that with time, this will only get worse.

Especially handpumps in deep boreholes break down very often and are abandoned (actual figures 70 to 90%). Statistics are hard to beat. It is expected that within 10 years most VLOM handpumps in Africa will be broken down.

What makes a handpump sustainable?
Sustainability is mainly dependend on 2 factors:
(1) Time between Repairs (TbR) and
(2) Sustainability of the Support Structure (SSS) that can do these repairs.

(1) Is is obvious that the fragile VLOM pumps have a very low TbR and are therefore not very sustainable. The VLOM handpumps (often mass produced in India) are not designed for heavy duty day-in day-out pumping in African rural communities. The advantage of these India pumps is that they are cheap, the disadvantage is that they break down all the time (sometimes already within a few weeks) and need many spares that are typically made for these pumps, so not available on the local market. No wonder that communties are irritated by the the never ending repairs of "their" handpump. On top of that, they cannot afford these frequent repairs as well, it drains the small family cash budget.

(2) The Sustainability of the Support Structure (SSS or tripple S) is even more crucial for sustainability of a handpump. Also in this aspect the VLOM approach failed, because the support structure in VLOM is in fact nothing more than a few trained people in the community. If these persons move away or die, there is no follow up. Also the supply of spare parts in local shops is not sustainable. It soon became evident that the shop keepers were not particulary interested to sell handpump parts because they were hard to get for them and also because of the low profit margins.

The FairWater BlueZone alternative
Technology & quality matters. Therefore first of all, to avoid the irritations of the never ending breakdowns, the BluePump has been designed to be the most increadilbly reliable handpump on the market. In fact, the BluePump therefore also need no spares all the time. Maintenance is limited to regular check on nuts and bolts. In addition to that, the Sustainability of the Support Structure (SSS) is also solid and organized in a different, modern and professional private sector approach to create sustainable win / win relations.

The Bluezone Concept with A-B-C maintenance approach
The recommended O&M concept for the BluePump is a simple A-B-C which stands for:
A. the "Agent", or country distributor (supported by FairWater and the world-wide distributor BOODE B.V.);
B. the "Back-Up" of a regional operating company or structure (supported by the Agent), close by the users;
C. the "Caretaker" of the community (supported by the regional Back-up).

These 3 elements are in contact with each other and each plays a different role.
A. The Agent has pumps and parts in stock and expertise available;
B. The (regional) Back-Up has a repair capacity and assist the agent with installation and repairs;
C. The Caretaker supervises the use of the pump and is the eyes and ears for the Back-Up structure.

The regular small maintenance of the BluePump can still done by a local caretaker, he/she is appointed by the community and may recieve (yes or no, depending on the community) a small salary to supervise the water fetching and to collect the contribution of the users. Acceptable family contributions for this supervision in present rural Africa is in the order of 0,5 to 1 US$ per family per month.

In case of a problem the caretaker will contact the regional BluePump Back-Up support for assistance. Repairs will be done Fast, Fixed & Fair in price, the "triple F Approach". The price for the repair is mainly depending on the distance. Because the BluePump will never need a lot of spares, the community normally does not pay for the spares or other materials used. The obvious advantage is that they know exactly what the maintenance of the BluePump will cost them each year.

In the ABC approach, the community is encouraged to make an arrangement with the regional Back-Up support for (1) a regular ABC or (2) for what price they will come to fix the pump when needed.

(1) The regular ABC will cost the community between 50 US$ and 100 US$ a year, normally with a 3 month quarantee.
(2) The Pay per Repair (PpP) can be done for a fixed price, with also a 3 month quarantee.

No community water bank-account needed
In the old VLOM approach, communities were encouraged to regular contribute to create a sum that could be used in case of repairs. However, this often created many problems in the community, because normally the money was already gone when needed for a repair for "various" reasons. With this new A-B-C approach this additional accountability problem is also avoided.

Sustainable water supply for the lowest price
Because of the simplicity and reliability of the BluePump, breakdowns are rare and can easily be resolved without many expensive spares. Therefore the BluePump repairs should in practice normally be done for a low and fixed price. The BluePump ABC concept therefore makes the BluePump the cheapest to operate & maintain handpump for community water supply.

 

ABC for a BluePump in Mozambique by the local company "BlueZone", the country dealer for the BluePump.
(this is an UNICEF sponsored BluePump, 24/7 pumping from 67m. deep, providing water for about 2.000 people)

...

FairWater has a modern, "Private Sector Assistance" (PSA) approach for the O&M of handpumps, in Africa, which differs from the traditional "old" VLOM (Village Level Operated and Maintained) approach that did not bring the expected sustainability.

The FairWater Private Sector O&M Approach is based on the understanding that community water problems can best be solved with durable and reliable handpumps that can be mainained at low-cost with the help of a professional Regional Maintenance Team (RMT).

The idea to start with a Foundation to replace broken handpumps started already in 1997 in Mozambique when Paul van Beers was the Country representative of SaWa, a Dutch NGO that specialized in rehabilitation of small pipes water systems in countries that were in a post-war situation.
In a post-war situation, most water systems are broken down, so it makes sense to start with rehabilitation projects.

Already in the first week in Mozambique, he was invited for workshop to discuss the problem of broken handpumps. Over 80% of the handpumps in Mozambique was broken down. When he realized the magnitude and importance of that issue, he was directly challenged how to solve the Operation & Maintenance (O&M) problems of water systems and handpumps in particular; what makes water systems work or why do they fail, what are the key success factors to look for and what to avoid. In other words, what happens in the post-donor phase, when the communities have to maintain the donor pump, all by themselves.

When looking into that problem, he soon found out that this was not a typical Mozambican post-war problem, but that in fact, all over Africa, most of the handpumps had severe maintenance problems.

Although still many thousands of handpumps are rusting away far in the bush, to his opinion, that is not the key problem. Controversely, the key problem today is that the issue of sustainability is still out of the focus of many NGOs. In other, more simple words, they seem not to really care about it. Many NGOs justify their existence by doing good but don't like to look back, too busy with their next "do-good" project. Understandable, everybody wants a job and do good, but it's does not deliver what was promised, so it's not right in the end.

When you go deep into the subject of why handpumps are not sustainable, it's becomes clear also a fascinating and complex subject, due to all these stakeholders own interest, incompetence, corruption and hidden agenda's.  He continued to study these issues, visited many handpump sites, evaluated NGO projects and handpump factories around the world and did studies amoungst others for the World Bank. He reported about his findings in many conferences and reports, but amazingly enough, there was still very little interest from the donors and NGOs for this issue; often, they didn't really want to hear about this and preferred business as usual.

A cristal clear conclussion was that the standard handpumps commonly used were far too fragile to be used in community water supply. In fact, they were designed to be used for a few families only! When used in communities, they broke down often and needed too many spare parts.

Obviously, in the first place, the communities needed a more solid and reliable handpump. However, there was no incentive at all within the sector to develop such a better handpump for several "business reasons". Quality and durability was therefore not an option, also because quality comes with a higher price and most NGOs were mainly interested in cheap pumps. Besides, many countries had already "decided" that a better handpump was not necessary and imposed to standardise on one or or more types of pumps, although they knew very well that these types were too fragile and not sustainable. Hidden agenda's, commercial interest and in fact disrespect for the need of communities were clearly behind these decisions.

However, in the communities these fragile traditional pumps continue to break down and thousands families were desperate in need for a better and more durable handpump. But NGOs were still very happy with feeling good and did not feel an urge to change. In the "charity business" the focus is on fund raising and not on creating sustainable water points, unfortunatly. Billions of US$ were raised for water projects each year, nobody was checking the results and so there was no need to change.

In the meantime, men were walking on the moon, planes became extreamly reliable with jet engines, the fax was invented, computers did miracles, colour TV was in most households, mobile phones conquered the world, .... But in the poor communities, schools and health centers in Africa, people suffered more and more and many thousands of kids died in silence because of broken handpumps....

These numerous local drama and disasters were never on the news, nobody speaks about this; it could spoil the reputation of NGOs that were so proudly promoting their water projects to "help" the poor people with water aid. How come the world didn't know or did't care about this dark problem in the far away bush of Africa?

In 2002 he became managing director of the Rural Water Development Project (RWD) in Kisii and had finally the possibility to put his ideas to develop a better handpump into action. The RWD project had a competent staff and together with them and the local private sector, the first model of the BluePump was developed. More field test with NGOs in the field (Oxfam, Samatarian Purse, ASAP, ADRA in several African countries followed and the rest is history. The BluePump is now here to stay. Already over 500 BluePumps are working every day in Africa, helping over 150.000 people with clean and safe water, day in and day out.

Many NGOs helped to develop and improve the design. Particularly Oxfam Kenya showed interest, NGOs as Global Resources Alliances (GRA Tanzania), IRD in Swaziland, ADRA Niger, Samatarian Purse Mozambique, Christian Service Commitee (CSC) Malawi, ASAP Burkina, etc. were also positive and courageous enough to try the BluePumps already in the early stages.

FairWater has an objective approach and is independent from Government subsidies and other policy makers. Instead, we prefer to work together with the green private sector and a small group of dedicated people all over the world, that are willing to go the extra mile and have a pure & genuine interest in making things better in a long lasting, sustainable way. No short term gains, no penny wise, pound foolish actions or flash campaigns just to raise money without an impact. We simply do what needs to be done for the people in Africa that need water every day; we rehabiliate the abandoned handpumps.

People need water, not more reports
We therefore absolutely do not agree with Governments or NGOs, that wast time with more and more studies without practical actions. This only shows that they do not really understand what goes on in the communities in Africa. People cannot drink reports. We can only hope that finally donors will start to fund practicle projects and not only studies. The technology is now available, together with the right BlueZone management concept for scaling up, so no time to waste!

Our approach is simple and effective: we solve problems by creating local jobs, NOT with charity donations. Therefore we focus on involvement of the local private sector, cost recovery options through up scaling, and improvement of logistics, supply chains and integrated business. We do this in an evidence based manner, everybody can see and follow what we do within our water projects. We have 2 major lines of intervention:

(1) The BlueZone Concept: This is a management model to create safe & sustainable rural water supply in a service region for a fair price. The success of the model is based on the combination of using a very reliable (but simple) handpump (the BluePump) in an area with regional support from the private sector for maintenance. At the same time, the service provider is also involved in other water related services in "his" BlueZone, like for instance installation of new BluePumps, solar systems, irrigation systems, water filters systems, etc. As long as he keeps his customers satisfied, also with maintenance support, all these activities will add up to a profitable sustainable business in water services that makes everybody happy.

(2) Low-cost water filters for households, schools and rural hospitals are part of the model, to secure safe water for the users. FairWater promotes therefore simple & practical solutions such as the Kisii bucket filter for households and the improved BioSand filter, such as the Tiva filter. The introduction and after sale service of these filters is also part of the BlueZone Concept.

Who is:

Süreyya GökSüreyya Gök is the Co-Founder and Director of FairWater. Apart from her professional career as the senior Financial Specialist of the European Branch of an international company in Amsterdam, she has a passion for social work.

Since 2006 she is also a municipal councillor for the Social Democratic Party (PvdA), first in the city Almere and presently in Amsterdam in The Netherlands, with a special focus on how to contribute to better conditions for children and elderly people.

Sureyya has been also active in the Multi Ethnical Network for Women (MEV) to empower women with ethnical background.
Sureyya pairs a Turkish cultural background with an international orientation in a Dutch setting and she utilizes her keen observational skills and passion for people to write short stories in English, Dutch and Turkish about social issues and lifestyle experiences.

 

Paul van BeersPaul van Beers, initiator of FairWater, is the program manager of the FairWater Trust Fund Projects, he holds a M.Sc. in Environmental Hydrology & Hydrogeology and has a vast international background and professional contacts based on 30 years of research and project management in Rural & Peri-Urban Water Supply, Hydrology and Environmental projects in Burkina Faso, Mauretania, Mozambique, Kenya, Angola, Benin, Chad, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Cameroon, South Africa, Namibia, Ethiopia, Malawi, Swaziland, Zambia, Tanzania, Brazil and Oman.

After completing his studies in Geographical Hydrology, Remote Sensing and Geophysics, he started his professional career in Portugal (Hydro-geological studies in coastal aquifers 1980 - 1984). In 1985 he moved to Africa, Burkina Faso & Mauretania, mainly working in Rural Water Supply, and part-time bush pilot and flying instructor.
To keep in touch with the new developments in The Netherlands, he returned in 1994 to work as project manager in environmental projects. In 1996 he signed up as Country Director Mozambique for the Dutch NGO SaWa, worked at the Mozambican Water Department and was involved in many studies, such as "Capacity & Willingness to pay" in rural and urban areas for the WorldBank. 

From 1998 to 2001 he worked as consultant all over Africa for NGOs and the WorldBank and learned more about rural water projects in other African countries. Focus of most of these studies was how to deal with the maintenance problems of handpumps, involving all aspects and stakeholders.

A new phase started when he was asked to lead the RWD program, one of the largest rural water projects in Kisii, western Kenya. The RWD program implemented over 1.000 water points and 15.000 latrines in that area and the staff had a lot of experinece in how to deal with maintenance problems and how to improve upon sustainability. His last long term assignment was in South Angola, as WatSan Advisor to the local Government up to 2006. In fact in this area, the first Bluezone was already invented and implemented by the Director of the Provincial Water Department Mr. Abel Costa. He pubished these experiences on several international siminars (e.g. WEDC) to contribute in solving the maintenance problems of handpumps with more reliable handpumps supported by a regional support structure in a BlueZone approach.

However, he soon realized that water sector and most NGOs were not particularly interested in putting any new ideas into practice, but only prefered to play safe and say sorry by focussing on more studies and more studies and more studies, see for instance the dissapointing results of the US$ millions The Gates Foundation has pumped into Africa only for more useless studies and more talking in endless siminasr and workshops. Also this well intended "charity" approach did not create one single sustainable drop for the poor.

This is a sad and typical attitude well described by a Portugiese proverb: "A Pensar Morreu Um Burro", (just thinking how to solve a problem, the donkey passed away...) and indeed, because of this passive attitude, thousands of kids died because the handpump in the village was broken down. Thank you very much, uncle Bill...

As being a from a proud "Frysian" background (people from the north of Holland, know for being stuborn & social committed and with a passion for water) he did not took "no" for an answer and picked up the challange and started in 2007 the FairWater Foundation to develop the BlueZone concept with the reliable BluePump in order to improve the sustainability of handpump water projects in Africa.

He is a member of the Dutch NEDWORC ''Consultants for Development Foundation'' and also a founding board member of Global Rainwater Harvesting Collective and has worked for Universities, Consultancy firms, The World Bank and National and International NGOs.

 

FairWater is a registered foundation (NL-34316771) based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

 

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