Kilimanjaro, TZ – Area water system unable to maintain supply – 15 Nov 2020

Lishe Bora was assessing if the Mkyashi Water Project could benefit the community by being connected to the Kirua Kahe water supply when the Village Executive Officer showed them that the supply was not delivering enough water.

Lishe Bora’s manager Mary, was about to check with the Mkyashi Water Project Committee about the idea of the connection, but the Village Executive Officer first asked her to check his Kirua Kahe tap. She learned that the water supply was very low pressure and hardly a trickle was coming out. He said that it had been like this since they installed it months ago. The VEO urged Mary to assist Mkyashi Water committee to re-establish the community water system that had stopped supplying water when the local electricity company interrupted the supply of electricity to the system’s electric water pump.

After Mary met with the VEO and the Mkyashi Water Committee chairperson, they all resolved to form a coalition of interested community members to re-establish the Mkyashi Water Project Committee and their project to its previous capacity. Additionally, they decided to request that Lishe Bora’s partner Tupendane consult on the project because the community requested this assistance.

The next steps are to confirm that the Water Committee is willing and able to take ownership of the water project and meet regularly to plan its future. Then the committee will need to schedule the electricity supply and purchase a new electric pump that will cost around 2,000,000 TZS / US$ 870. To fund this, the committee is planning on collecting back fees from current members, taking a loan for the remainder, and repaying the loan from future water fees.

The committee knows that it will need to improve its organizational capacity for governance over water fee collection and pro-active maintenance of the system.