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Dears,

With any new technology, it is always good to first ask yourself, "what is the problem it solves?"

In this case, it seems that is would mainly solve the problems of donors who gave funding for these water points. They can have a good idea if their money is well spend.

But even than, it is a rather complex way to do so, and needs expensive follow up for many many years. That money could be better used in our view to lower O&M cost in the first place.

In terms of making the water points more durable, it hardly solves any issue unfortunately, on the contrary, it adds technology and makes the waterpoint more vulnerable, more to go wrong and more expensive to maintain.

Given the fact that over 50% of the rural water points have serious O&M problems to be maintained because of the high repair costs, this is not a good development.

Often you see, that when there is a new technology, donors jump on it because of "innovation" gives them a certain publicity and they are a bit blind for what is really brings to the poor.

In reality, if a water point fails, people will act fast when the water point is really fulfilling a need and contact in one way or another a mechanic to solve the problem. A remote device will make them even more dependent on alien technology, so we do not support this new direction. Rural people are very capable of organising repairs, do not need this!

Let us first focus how we can lower the O&M costs for the poor, in stead of pleasing the donors with fancy technology that will bring even more costs and problems to the poor! For instance by using more reliable pumps like the BluePump.

Paul van Beers FairWater Foundation