in July 2016, we completed the Buursalah District water project. The overall objective of the project is to improve health and sanitation conditions of rural people from Buursalah district by promoting their access to safe drinking water.
This report covers the overall achievement of the project with physical & financial summary according to final commissioning of the project.
In the beginning, the villagers encountered a barrage of challenges in regard to water and sanitation.
- Project Objectives:
The overall objective of the project is to improve health and sanitation condition rural people of project area by improving their access to potable drinking water & sanitation.
- Project Location:
The proposed project site is located in Buursalah District The site is situated in Mudug Region of Puntland state, northern Somalia.
- Socio Economic Condition:
The settlement of the project area is densely populated. The project covered 500 populations from 60 households; Population comprises 61 % female and 39% male. The livelihoods of the people depend on agriculture and small businesses, however, the agriculture product is not enough to round year.
- Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene situations before scheme implementation:
The condition of Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene of the scheme area was very poorer than in the others parts of rural areas. The household of scheme area fetched water from unprotected seasonal springs.From those seasonal sources they were getting only 24 liter unsafe per person per day which is below than the national standard 45 liter per person per day. They needed around 57 minute to fetch round trip water and had to spend around 4 hours per day to fetch water from each household. Regarding sanitation, out of 60 house-holds covered by this scheme, only 30 household have toilet in their house yard.
- Achievement of the Project:
6.1 Establishment of Water & Sanitation User committee:
The inclusive Water supply and Sanitation User Committee (WUSC) has been formed with representation of the women and other discriminated groups in proportion to populations in the project areas. User committee consists of 9 members with 5 being women.
The user committee is well function and established. During the implementation of scheme, committee has been capacitated in institutional and technical aspect through different trainings, orientation and meetings.
6.2 People have access to safe drinking water:
This scheme consists of 6 sub- systems which serves 498 people.The water demand is so high. To meet this demand, water has tapped from 7 small spring sources and collected in 4 different reservoirs. Water from different reservoirs has distributed through 20 numbers of public tap stands located nearby community house that needed only 15 minute to fetch round trip water instead of 58 minute before this project.
The scheme consists of different structures like intake at source, transmission & distribution pipelines, storage tanks (reservoir tanks) and public tap stands along with respective valve chamber as required based on hydraulic design. Some protection works such as barbed wire fencing, plantation, diversion of runoff water etc., were done to protect the sources.
6.3 Improve sanitation and hygiene practices:
During the scheme implementation, project staff facilitated to the communities to construct improved sanitation facilities and to improve hygiene practices. The project conducted different awareness campaigns meetings, orientation, door to door visit and training, for improving hygiene practices of the people living in its scheme areas and people were able to acquired valuable information related to sanitation and hygiene. Out of 60 household in the scheme area, only 28 household have toilet in their house before scheme implementation. After scheme implementation, all household have toilet. Moreover, all household have constructed dry rack, Household have separate garbage pit to dispose their household waste. Project is continuously supporting and facilitating to the people for their behavior change on sanitation and hygiene.
6.4 Increased Capacity for sustainable management of the scheme
Sustainability issues of schemes were carefully considered from the beginning of scheme implementation. Different kinds of capacity building training were provided to capacitate local people for quality construction and long term operation and maintenance of the scheme. Total 9 users committee member (5 female) were capacitated through management I and Management II training, One Village Maintenance Worker was trained for operation and maintenance of schemes and total 20 women tap stand care taker were trained (all female) specially to take care their own tap and maintain sanitation and hygiene of their own cluster.
- Project Cost:
The overall project cost is under the ceiling of agreed amount. Mainly the cost head are cash payment to user committee for construction works, material cost and training & mobilization cost on ground to implement the system.