Tich Dong & Phu Tan Hamlets
Tam Xuan 1 Commune Nui Thanh District
Quang Nam Province

Average monthly income: $10
Population Served with New System: 2,000 people

Water Systems built with funding from
EMW supporters Janet McKinley and George Miller

The Need for Clean Water

Tich Dong & Phu Tan Hamlets are located Nui Thanh District at the southern end of Quang Nam Province about 75 miles from Danang city. It is just a few miles north of the Chu Lai American Air Base built during the Vietnam War.

There are 135 hamlets in Nui Thanh, comprising 33,000 households amounting to 142,000 people. Of these households, EMW estimates that 45% did not have access to potable water as of January 2004. Eighty percent of the Tich Dong & Phu Tan Hamlets inhabitants are farmers with an average monthly per capita cash income of about $10.00.

The need for clean water is extremely high in Tich Dong & Phu Tan Hamlets.
Many families in Nui Thanh do not have clean drinking water in their villages. As a result many times they have to travel great distances to fetch water for household use. This takes time away from working and studying and other activities. When people do not have good water readily available they use contaminated water from the closest source.

Most of the area soils are either heavily alkaline or acid, so in most locations the natural underground water is unsuitable for cooking or drinking. The main source of fresh water is from surface water, usually collected from irrigation canals. During the dry season, local people often have to walk more than a mile to fetch good water for their daily household needs. The irrigation water in the canals that they use for washing, bathing and cooking is usually not hygienic.

People complain that the water causes health problems and digestive diseases.
According to UNICEF, 50% of deaths among young children in Vietnam are caused by illnesses related to inadequate sanitation facilities, poor hygiene practices, and the ingestion of contaminated drinking water. Lack of access to safe water is the leading cause for malnutrition of young children; malnutrition currently affects 36.7% of all children under five years of age. 

Implementation

EMW representatives met with the people and local government officials to discuss their needs and responsibilities of each party during and after implementation of the project.

Local people were made responsible to dig and bury all the main water pipes leading from the water tower and through the village. They also had to purchase a water meter, pipe and fittings leading from the main lines to their homes. At regular intervals they have to pay a set fee for each cubic meter of water they use each month. The fees are used to pay the water manager, electric bill and maintenance.

Local government officials were responsible to take care of all the necessary approvals and select a local water manager before construction is started. Selection of the water manager was most important to the success of the project. It was made clear that this person has to understand everything about the system and that they need to be responsible, honest, intelligent and hard working.

EMW’s responsibilities included finding the largest supply of clean water in the area, have the water tested and certified as fit for drinking before the project was begun. EMW provided all designs for the water tower, wells pumps, electrical system and distribution maps. They provided and paid the contractors and suppliers needed to build the system. Lastly, EMW turned over the system to the local government after completion and testing. 

Benefits

Thanks to this project, the residents of Tich Dong & Phu Tan Hamlets no longer have to travel great distances to fetch clean water. The project delivers safe water directly to their homes. This gives them more time to attend to other family needs and to work longer hours in the fields and at their small businesses. When the children come home from school they now do not have to lend a hand in doing this daily chore and they can spend the time doing homework. It is good for the kids to be able to take a clean shower after spending a long day at school. Many children have to walk or ride a bicycle long distances to school and stay there all day.

The project benefits in terms of preventing water-borne diseases is tremendous. This translates into fewer trips to the local health station and less money spent on medicine and health care. Clean water is necessary for bathing and personal hygiene, the health of women and children especially, and for cooking. An abundant source of clean water also allows people to grow small gardens right next to their homes, thus improving household nutrition and food variety.

EMW believes that the benefits to the local people of having clean water delivered to people’s homes are enormous, and that all rural safe water projects should be designed this way. Many projects provide only village wells or centralized delivery facilities. These sorts of projects often don’t work well because they lack built-in individual responsibility for paying for maintenance on the part of the end users, and don’t provide incentives to limit water use.