DandaTole is a community of 42 households and lies in ward number 16. The ward is across Kamalamairiver and the community is among the geographically remote communities of the ward. Access to safe drinking water was a dream for the people of the community. Usually “we have to walk an hour for a bucket of water” says Bhuwan Kafle a women of the community. This increased work load for women. Sometimes when they used water directly from the river, they used to face health problems.
DandaTole is a community of 42 households and lies in ward number 16. The ward is across Kamalamairiver and the community is among the geographically remote communities of the ward. Access to safe drinking water was a dream for the people of the community. Usually “we have to walk an hour for a bucket of water” says Bhuwan Kafle a women of the community. This increased work load for women. Sometimes when they used water directly from the river, they used to face health problems. On the other hand, during dry seasons, people of lower belt of hillsidewere reluctant to let the people of Dandatole use water from their taps. As a result many cases of social conflict arose during the past.
After CIUD’s partnership with Municipality and local communities during its previous years implementation of the programme, the message of right to access to safe drinking water was well rooted among the communities and hence the community of Dandatole put their demand with Municipality office and CIUD team.
DilkumariThapa Magar who is a local of ward 16 and was also the secretary of Project Management Committee, a local users’ committee for WASH improvement, played a vital role in bringing in front the community’s demand for the water supply scheme. She put her continuous effort and exhibited her strong will power to gather support for providing access to drinking water to the community in need. As this was a genuine agenda, local people also supported her constantly.
Amidst all these, CIUD played a catalytic role with its voice for the poor communities and with the technical options for the water supply scheme. As a result of this combined effort, municipality was convinced about the need of the support and this year the Municipality office separated budget for the water supply scheme. So many years had passed and the voices were unheard, and this year – the municipality provided NRs 300,000 as a partial support for construction of the water supply scheme. This fund has been used as matching fund for construction of Tyangle Water Supply Scheme under supervision and monitoring of CIUD team with support from Water Aid Nepal (WAN).
The scheme comprises of two intakes and a collection chamber with storage of 20m3 Ferro cement Tank. The transmission line is of 2700m and 15 Tap stands have been designed for the project. 233 users will be benefitted from this scheme.
This is a case of advocacy in the sector which has resulted into communities’ voices for their WASH rights being stronger than ever before.
On the other hand, the community has been very participative in implementation phase as well. BhuwanKafle, a resident of Dandatole cited “we are very pleased to contribute in the construction work. I am delighted that much more time will be saved in coming days for fetching water.We will not have to quarrel anymore for a bucket of water after the completion of this project. We thank CIUD and Municipality team for helping us.”
We hope – more communities will raise their voices for improving WASH situations in their communities and will continue to step forward for the solutions they need.