Improve access to water, reduce women’s burden

When the country was hit by Tropical Storm Ana a few weeks ago, many things suffered. Many of us are still reeling from the effects of the floods and the increased load shedding that has followed as Egenco and Escom continue to work on repairing some of their damaged equipment.

About 22 000 people are reported to have been displaced in the five worst-hit districts of Chikwawa, Phalombe, Mangochi, Nsanje, and Mulanje, with most seeking temporary shelter in displacement sites. When such disasters strike, it is women and children that are more gravely affected, particularly by the impacts of poor access to potable water.

For most semi-urban and rural residents, who normally depend on communal water sources such as boreholes, water kiosks, and natural water sources such as rivers for their daily needs, the challenge has been even more compounded. Some have had to wait long periods to access water from boreholes where queues may have got longer following increased demand for the commodity, while others had access to their water sources completely cut off due to the effects of the floods.

Most city residents who get their water supply from water boards experienced some 24 hours or more of interrupted supply after the cyclone. The water supply companies blamed it on the prolonged power failure following the damaging floods which rendered their water processing machines nonfunctional. While most residents have since been fortunate enough to have their water supply restored, the fact is that the majority of Malawians are poor and rely on alternative water sources.

Generally, people living in poverty have less access to potable water. But lack of access to clean water is not just an effect of poverty, it is also a cause of poverty, as it results in huge negative impacts on women and girls. According to Unicef, globally, women and girls spend a collective 200 million hours collecting water every day. This was revealed in a study conducted in 2016, and the United Nations children’s agency described the millions of hours spent on collecting water as a “colossal waste of time”. Indeed, this is time that the girls could spend studying in school, while the women could be running some businesses or engaging in gainful employment to improve their livelihoods.

In the Malawi context, the wasted time is undoubtedly costly to the economy, particularly considering that women and girls form over 50 percent of the country’s population. The UN estimates that in Malawi, women who collected water spent 54 minutes on average, while men spent only six minutes. Now to have the majority of the population ‘wasting’ much of their time looking for such a basic commodity as water is not only sad, but it also paints a gloomy picture of the country’s development prospects.

One simply has to refer to the Malawi Population and Housing Census (2018) to see how grave the water access challenge is in the country. According to the census report, only 3.1 percent of the 18 million Malawians had direct access to piped water in their homes, while 6.3 percent had piped water available in their compound. This means nationwide, less than 10 percent of the population have access to clean, piped water in their homes.

Where does that leave the rest? According to the same Census, 8.1 percent use a community kiosk to access water while 61.7 percent depend on boreholes. The remaining Malawians, about 20.8 percent, get their water from unsafe sources.

In fact, one would not be wrong to assume that the population that depends on unsafe water sources for their daily sanitation and hygiene needs is higher because when the boreholes and water taps in kiosks run dry, communities rely on the rivers and streams for their water supply. In some cases, accessing the community water attracts a fee, so if a household has no cash on a particular day, they have no option but to go to the nearest river.

And the cost is not just monetary. When water is not piped straight to the home, the burden of collecting it from distant places disproportionately falls on women and girls. It is women and girls that pay with their time and energy, which could have been invested in other things such as school and income-generating activities.

Many studies have shown how school attendance for both boys and girls is affected when they have to spend time collecting water. Poor access to water can also affect a family’s health, increasing the risks of diseases that result from compromised sanitation and hygiene. One way to change this sad narrative is by investing more in efforts to increase access to water for all Malawians. Water is a basic need and a human right, so it is unfair that women and girls should have to spend much of their time searching for water. Sustainable Development Goal number Six calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030. Government needs to step up efforts in ensuring increased access to clean water for its citizens if we are serious about improving the well-being of women and girls and indeed, that of all citizens.