ABSTRACT

Water is essential for life and all human communities must have some kind of water source. The UN’s figures for 2010 show that, among the urban population of the low and middle income countries, about 73% have house connections and an additional 22% have access to public taps and boreholes. The technology used must be appropriate to the various costs and benefits of improved water supplies. Bold and sometimes wildly exaggerated claims have been made for the benefits of water supplies. The major ones occur in three fields: production, health and the saving of time and energy in the water-collection journey. Many governments feel that the task of building, and more especially of maintaining, thousands of scattered rural water supplies places an intolerable burden on their scarce resources. Self-help schemes, in which community contributions in cash or labor are used to supplement government resources for construction of community water supplies, should not be confused with self-supply.