MYANMAR: Water shortages loom in delta

Photo: Contributor/IRIN

Access to potable water becomes a key challenge during the country's annual dry season

YANGON, 20 February 2009 (IRIN) - Aid agencies working in the cyclone-hit Ayeyarwady Delta are scrambling to provide tens of thousands of people with water as the peak of the dry season approaches.

The delta's water storage ponds, which traditionally tided villagers over the dry season, were contaminated with salt water when Cyclone Nargis hit on 2 and 3 May 2008, bringing with it a wall of seawater. Traditional clay storage jars were also destroyed or washed away.

Now survivors of the cyclone will need help to meet their water needs until the monsoon rains return in late April or May, humanitarian workers told IRIN.

"People are using up what stores they have quickly, which indicates there will be a problem at the end of the dry season in April," said Than Myint, head of Save the Children's Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme in Myanmar. “Some villages will run out of water."

Humanitarian agencies are implementing several measures - from working with local water vendors to ensure water reaches the most needy villages, to installing high-tech reverse osmosis machines to remove the salt from brackish water.

However, Waldemar Pickardt, WASH chief at the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), which leads the cluster of government representatives, UN agencies and NGOs dealing with water issues, said it was important not to overstate the problem.

"We are all concerned, but we don't want to create a crisis by exaggerating the current situation," Pickardt told IRIN. "We have made a very good assessment of the water situation throughout the delta and we know exactly where the areas of potential shortage are when the dry season reaches its peak."

He said panic buying and hoarding of water could make the problem worse, and the price of water in the delta had already nearly doubled in recent months, from 20 kyats (2 US cents) for a 30 l container to 35 kyats (3.5 cents).

Khin Maung Win, WASH cluster chief and UNICEF representative, said all villages in the delta had been categorised according to their water needs, and each settlement had been assigned an NGO to help it cope with potential shortages.

The government was also active, he noted, requesting divisional commanders work closely with the WASH cluster and offering water trucks, tanks and boats.

In addition, humanitarian agencies are trying to ensure the delta's inhabitants are able to store enough water during the next rains for the dry season of 2009-2010.

"Our aim is two-fold: to take care of the water shortage and to put infrastructure in place for the next rainy season – to replace earthen pots and to repair ponds," said Pickardt.

Solutions

Save the Children was one of the agencies to raise the alarm about a potential water crisis last September, and built 2,600 temporary rainwater tanks to capture the last of the monsoon rains.

"We built the tanks using coconut trees, which had fallen in the cyclone, and tarpaulins," Than Myint told IRIN. "Now people are starting to use the water, but in fact they are using it earlier than we thought, which is a bad sign."

Save the Children has installed treatment plants in its project areas in Mawlamyinegyun and West Labutta to treat fresh water from creeks and irrigation canals. It has also dug 10 tube wells to a depth of more than 152m to prevent saline or arsenic contamination and is due to deliver 10 reverse osmosis (RO) machines.

Such machines may be part of the solution to the water shortage, said a UNICEF field worker, but their heavy use of energy makes them an unsustainable long-term solution.

However, Dan Collison, head of Save the Children's Nargis response, said relying on water vendors and redistributing supplies could hurt livelihood recovery in the shattered delta.

"Through a wide range of means, we need to provide more water," he told IRIN. "If people have to use their meagre incomes to buy water, they'll have less to restart their livelihoods.

"Put simply, there's a difference between surviving the dry season and emerging from the dry season with the means to build a future."

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