Water

Country Water Action: Pakistan
Hand Pumps Change Life of Women in Villages
(July 2006)

Thanks to newly installed water pumps, village women in Sanghar, Pakistan do not have to waste so much time and effort fetching water anymore. Their only concern now is what to do with more free time in their hands.

Contents Hand Pumps Buy Spare Time The Burden Of Fetching Water Village Organizing For Hand Pumps Killing Time In Sanghar

A rural water supply scheme in Pakistan has made the life of village women much easier than they ever thought it would be. Hand pumps were installed in the village with the help of the Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organization (SAFWCO), a nongovernment organization.

Najma Ramzan, a 39-year-old mother of seven from Qadir Bux Chango village in Sanghar, found her and other women's lives changed when the hand pumps arrived about a year ago. "We went to each other's homes, tried out the pumps and even tasted the water to find out which pump had the sweetest water," says Najma. "Suddenly, we all seemed to have so much spare time."

Fetching water is considered "a woman's job" in rural Pakistan and it used to take the women of Najma's village almost an hour to walk to the water source and return home with filled pitchers balanced on their heads. With the newly installed hand pumps, they now have more time in their hands.

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"As far as I can remember, I was always fetching water," says Najma. It had been Najma's routine, as well as all the women in her village, to fetch water from a far away canal for as long as she can remember. She made as many as eight trips a day in illness, pregnancy, or good health.

Sindh province, some 250 kilometers from Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, faces an acute shortage of fresh water much like other provinces in the country.

"Increased pumping of ground water has caused the water table to sink further. In many areas, water is saline or polluted by agro-chemicals," says Niaz Hussain Sial, General Manager of SAFWCO's social development and services programs.

SAFWCO, which helped Najma and the villagers install the pumps, got partial support from the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF)—a World Bank supported program.

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"Depending on how the clusters of houses are organized, there may be one pump for up to four households," says Amna Mallah, program officer at SAFWCO. Amna's group has been organizing communities and supporting them to find ways to tackle livelihood problems since the 1980s. So far, SAFWCO has organized 1,003 Village Development Organizations (VDOs) in Sanghar, with 613 male and 390 female organizations.

Poor households that qualify for SAFWCO support have to bear 20% of the installation cost—usually in kind—for building the small infrastructures they want.

"We asked them what they needed the most, and water was the unanimous answer," says Amna. "We then tested the ground water and upon finding it fit for drinking, we helped the villagers install 10 hand pumps for use by 40 households." The water that the hand pumps provide brought about marked changes in the lives of the women villagers.

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There's also another side to the story though. Women now face the worry of what to do in their spare time. "I do miss those all-women gatherings at the canal," says Najma.

They have now decided to meet regularly in the evenings to discuss development matters while bringing out their needlework and sit and chat. "I can do ralli-making (patchwork quilts) to earn some extra money and also rest. Now I don't have to worry if there will be enough water," says Najma. "We can now bathe whenever we want, we do not have to walk to the canal, and our families do not have to wait until we have brought water home," she adds. "Now that we have water, we hope we can bring electricity also. I'm quite hopeful."

Rehana, Najma's teenage daughter, also shares her mother's happiness. "The canal was a place to meet friends but not having to travel so far to fetch water is a far greater comfort," she says. "Now I can wash the sanitary cloth (for her monthly period) without worrying that others would see me."

The Razman family is also building a toilet, and Rehana has more privacy coming her way.