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East Timor
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When the fighting started in September 1999, Natalino di Silva fled to the hills with his wife and four children. “During the day, we hid in the jungles, and at night I would sneak back into the village to get food supplies from my home,” he recalls.
But not for long. His home, like others in the village of Poetete, was destroyed in the conflict that engulfed East Timor after the vote for independence on 30 August 1999.
Now the family lives in Ermera, the nearby subdistrict town. There simply wasn’t much left to go back to once the conflict was over. Ermera offers the family at least the basic facilities: a school for the children, a few hours of electricity, and running water from early morning until late in the evening.
Mr. di Silva uses water from public taps near his new makeshift house in Ermera. “We use the water for everything—drinking, bathing, washing our clothes, brushing our teeth,” he says. “It is our only source of water.”
Water supply to Ermera and the nearby villages was disrupted during the conflict, which destroyed vital infrastructure. Now the system, rehabilitated and upgraded under a $9 million Water Supply and Sanitation Rehabilitation Project, administered by ADB, provides cleaner and more plentiful water. The project is financed from the Trust Fund for East Timor. The public taps supply water for 12 hours a day. Mr. di Silva hopes this will soon increase to 24-hour service, but agrees it is a substantial improvement compared with the past.
DELIVERY Children often help fill containers with water for use at home
A 60-cubic-meter reservoir has been built to improve the water supply, and both the water source and distribution systems have been covered. “The more storage you can provide, the more security of supply you have,” explains Malcolm Ehrlich, the project’s chief technical adviser. The new scheme brings clean water close to people’s homes. “It reduces the risk of disease as well as increases the convenience,” notes Mr. Ehrlich.
The project, which covers every district of East Timor, is being implemented in collaboration with domestic and international nongovernment organizations (NGOs). The Ermera district subproject has been completed and handed over to the Government’s Department for Water and Sanitation Services (WSS).
The French NGO Action Contre la Faim (ACF) (Action Against Hunger) continues to implement the effort under WSS’s supervision. “The quality of the ACF project is very good,” says Thomas da Silva, WSS District Supervisor for Ermera. “Every month I send a water sample for analysis in Dili, and I can say that ACF maintains a good technical standard.”
Now that the people have clean water, the supervisor says he would like to focus on improving sanitation facilities and improving public awareness of hygiene and the need to conserve water. This ties in with the objectives of the second phase of the ADB-managed project.
But in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, the project’s primary aim was to provide clean water to the people of East Timor, including those who were then returning to rebuild homes destroyed in the fighting or start new lives in new places.
In its first phase, the Project helped restore water supply to schools, hospitals, and business ventures, as well as to homes and poor communities. For the poor, the public taps are usually the only source of clean water, fulfilling a basic need. But water supply has also helped people resume gainful employment.
In Ermera itself, Natalia Guterres runs a restaurant a short distance from Mr. di Silva’s shanty at the other end of Ermera’s single thoroughfare. The restaurant is a simple place with long wooden tables and benches, but the food is tasty and clean. Running water helps her maintain a good standard of hygiene. Ms. Guterres has a single tap for her home and restaurant, but without it she may not have managed to run the eatery.
Ms. Guterres also moved to Ermera from Poetete after the fighting subsided in 1999. She opened the restaurant in December 1999. Before the conflict, she and her husband, Augustus Suarez Medeira, were traders, collecting corn from their neighbors to sell in Dili. But the fighting changed all that, disrupting both farming and trade.
“We had to find a different way to survive,” says Ms. Guterres. “We made more money before. But the restaurant is doing better now, and we make about $300 a month in profits.” Somehow she manages to support her family of six on that income.
The Water Supply and Sanitation Rehabilitation Project has helped families around the country survive the difficult times and get back on their feet. With their country’s independence on 20 May 2002, it is projects such as these that have helped the people of East Timor look forward to a better future.
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