IRIN
MYANMAR: Cyclone victims harness rainwater to survive
17 July 2008


PAWIN, 17 July 2008 (IRIN) - Viewed as a curse by those who lost their 
homes and loved ones to Cyclone Nargis, heavy rain in recent weeks is 
proving a saviour of sorts to thousands of cyclone survivors in need of 
safe drinking water.

"When it rains, I feel it is a blessing," Daw Khin, a woman in her early 
fifties in the village of Pawin outside Bogale Township at the far tip 
of the delta, said. "Now what I have to do when it rains is ensure it 
drains into a ceramic pot."

But Daw Khin - struggling to provide for her five-member family more 
than two months after the worst natural disaster in recent times to 
strike Myanmar - is still worried.

Should the heavy rains that continue to pummel her roofless home stop, 
so too would her one source of clean drinking water.

"The thought of no more rain kills me," she said.

An estimated 2.4 million people were severely affected by the category 
four storm that struck Yangon Division and parts of the Ayeyarwady Delta 
in southern Myanmar in early May, leaving nearly 140,000 people either 
dead or missing.

Inadequate access to water

A Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) in June by the Association of 
South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the UN and the Myanmar government, 
revealed a significant number of households reporting inadequate access 
to clean drinking water.

On 10 July the UN reported that 74 percent of people in the cyclone 
areas had inadequate access to clean water, with rainwater collection 
viewed as critical in reducing the risk of disease outbreaks.

Most people in the delta today find themselves reliant on rainwater as 
their primary source of safe drinking water.

Ponds, the traditional source of drinking water in the area, became 
heavily salinated when a three-metre tidal surge inundated much of the 
low-lying area, devastating homes and crops across a 23,500 square 
kilometre area (almost twice the size of Lebanon).

Today those same ponds are avoided by area residents for fear of 
water-borne diseases like diarrhoea - prompting them to look to the sky 
for help, which so far has delivered as part of this year's rainy 
season.

To harness what nature provides, residents, particularly in more remote 
areas, make do with what they can find - including bamboo, or plastic 
sheeting donated by the government or non-governmental organisations 
(NGOs) to funnel the water, while others use handmade drains made of 
zinc.

"My drain is made of plastic. But it's good enough for three 
households," Hla Htay, a Pawin resident who shares her water with her 
neighbours, told IRIN.

"It'd be a disaster, if we have no more rain," she said.

Water purification

International organisations and UN agencies, including the UN Children's 
Fund (UNICEF), are working to provide water purification tablets and 
kits, as well as water filters, to ensure the water is clean.

Various water purification systems in the storm-affected area have also 
been put in place - in an effort to mitigate the risk of water-borne 
diseases - an approach that so far appears to be working.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), to date there have 
been no reported outbreaks of water-borne disease.

Moreover, significant efforts are now under way to pump contaminated 
water out of ponds so that they can be replenished with this year's 
monsoon rains.

Keeping traditional water ponds for drinking and household needs is the 
best way to mitigate the problem of water shortages, according to 
Waldemar Pickardt, chief of water and environmental sanitation for 
UNICEF/Myanmar in Yangon, the former Burmese capital.

Time running out

Most of the pumps used to drain the ponds are small. This allows for 
greater mobility into more remote areas by boat, but the pumps' capacity 
is limited. Pumping out the ponds is a race against time. In some 
places, local volunteers are stepping forward to clean them up. However, 
many ponds have yet to be touched, even though the heaviest rains 
normally end in August.

"I'm afraid we won't finish cleaning all the water ponds before the 
rainy season goes out," UNICEF's Pickardt told IRIN, pointing out that 
they now had only one month to make the ponds ready to fill with 
rainwater for the year ahead.

"I'm afraid the next hardship will be to get safe water," Pickardt 
warned. "Water shortages would be more likely to happen in those areas 
[the storm-affected Ayeyarwaddy Delta] when the rain stops," the UNICEF 
official said, adding that a water shortage was likely in the dry season 
around January and February.


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