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.

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.

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