Clean Water for Local Communities

Plans to provide clean water supplies to everyone in Tajikistan will only work if local communities are engaged in this ambitious programme, analysts say.



On January 23, Tajikistan’s water resources minister Masaid Hamidov announced that this year will see the start of a programme to provide 90 per cent of the population with clean drinking water by 2020.



The minister noted that only four million out of Tajikistan’s seven million people currently have access to clean water.



Tajikistan, like Kyrgyzstan, is richer in fresh water reserves than other Central Asian countries. Yet clean water is in short supply, creating multiple problems.



Mahmadsaid Isoev, director of Tajikselkhozvodoprovodstroy, which builds water-supply infrastructure for rural areas, said at least 70 per cent of the country’s supply system is obsolete and in need of repair or reconstruction.



“Water-supply enterprises are unable to maintain the distribution network or run it at full capacity because consumers don’t pay for the water they use,” he explained.



Agricultural reforms have only added to the problem. Soviet collective farms used to have unified water distribution systems, but when they were broken up into dozens – sometimes hundreds – of small farms, the supply system was divided up as well. “We draw up agreements with all of them [small farms], but the arrangements are never implemented,” complained Isoev.



Despite the government’s will to improve things, water experts say the campaign will not work unless urban and rural residents get involved. They cite positive examples where people in remote areas have set up their own water supplies.



“Soviet days are over, and people have to start thinking about their own future. It’s time they stopped relying solely on government,” said the head of a non-government group which works with local communities.



“In a village near Faizabad, our organisation solved this problem together with the local people. And there are many other examples in the Faizabad, Rasht and Nurobad districts.”



Anatoly Pulatov is technical director and an executive committee member of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, the dying water body which used to be fed by the Amu Darya, a major river whose source is in Tajikistan. He too agrees that Tajik government funding will not be enough to rejuvenate the country’s water-supply systems.



“In order to ensure effective use of various funding sources – national and local government, foreign investment and others - local communities must take the initiative,” he said.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)