Each morning Sophia Santos wakes up early, picks up two 20-litre plastic containers and walks to a neighbour's house in Polana Caniço 'A', a sprawling suburb in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, for a day's supply of water.
"We have no tap water at our house; there are no stand pipes [from where we can] buy," said the mother of two, waiting for her containers - originally tubs of cooking oil - to fill. "We pay [US 2 cents] for 20 litres of water. At some houses they pay as much as [US 4 cents]; if you don't have money then you have to talk with the owners so that you can pay later."
On bad days several other women are ahead of her in the queue and she has to wait her turn, then struggle home up the dusty street with the water for her household's cooking, washing, bathing and drinking needs.
The sale of water in urban areas is illegal, but some homes that have piped water charge for the service because access is often so difficult for many of Maputo's 1.7 million inhabitants. Only 730 000 people in the city are connected to mains water, sometimes only intermittently, so almost every household has one or more 20-litre containers in the kitchen for storing water.
The health repercussions of limited access to potable water are reflected in the number of hygiene-related infections like dysentery. "There are many waterborne cases in Polana Caniço Health Centre - we are confronted daily with these kinds of diseases, especially in children," Laura Valls, manager of the public-owned but privately run facility, told IRIN.
Mozambique has one of the highest economic growth rates in Africa, averaging more than 8 percent per annum over the past decade. Foreign direct investment has also boomed, but 16 years after the end of a civil war that wrecked the country, the majority of Mozambicans are still without basic services.
The government managed to reduce poverty among the 20 million people by about 15 percent between 1997 and 2003, pulling three million out of penury under its first Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA).
Better water access
But the privatisation of public utilities has also been government policy; the water system in Maputo and five other urban centres has been managed by private concessions since 2000, which has not translated into access for all.
Mozambique now has clean water coverage of 40 percent, whereas in 1980 coverage stood at 48 percent, but fell to 35 percent in 1990 and 32 percent in 2000.
Expanding clean water supplies is an aim of the second round of PARPA, which is backed by donors willing to help Mozambique achieve its Millennium Development Goal of 70 percent coverage by 2015.
In August Mozambique received a US$15 million credit facility from the International Development Association to support water and institutional projects, and in April the World Bank signed a US$16 million grant to Mozambique's Water Supply Assets and Investment Fund (FIPAG) to increase pipe-borne access for poor households in five cities: Beira, Maputo, Nampula, Pemba, and Quelimane.
"Under this grant, private service providers operating under lease contracts from FIPAG will connect an estimated 468,000 poor people to piped water supply through approximately 29,000 new yard taps; each is expected to serve around three households," the World Bank said.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
