Bagoroto gravity scheme – pipes and tanks

A few weeks ago, Dinesh, José and I went with some staff from WaterAid’s partner HTL to review a recently installed project in Bagaroto, which is in Maubara sub-district of Liquiça, about an hour west of Dili. The picture above is one of the houses in the village. It was an interesting experience for me, because whilst I have seen rural water systems before in Zambia, Madagascar and Nepal, this was the first time I had seen a ‘gravity scheme’.

Gravity schemes are common here as Timor is a very hilly country. It rains a lot in the mountains, and springs rise which can be capped and the water piped down to the villages. Timorese have actually been doing this for centuries with bamboo half-pipes, but they break easily and the water is open to contamination.

The main advantage of a modern gravity scheme (beyond secure pipes) is the big cement tank, which is normally placed uphill just outside the settlement. These tanks are quite large and ensure that, even if the spring doesn’t provide much water in the dry season, a decent supply of water can be saved in the tank for some time.It also ensures that there is good water pressure in the tapstands which are installed very close to the houses.


This system in Bagaroto was a great example of a gravity scheme. It had been installed a few months earlier by HTL, one of WaterAid’s local partner NGOs. Most International NGOs like WaterAid work with local partners as it’s the most sustainable way of doing things. The local NGOs are best-placed to understand their national context, and their organisational capacity is strengthened through long-term funding arrangements.

We were there to check up on the scheme a few months after installation, and fortunately everything was functioning properly. One thing that struck me was the distance which the pipes travel. It was a good 20 minute uphill trek following the pipe up the hillside to the source. As the hillsides are both steep and rain-sodden, landslides are common, see e.g. the picture above. This was an old landslide which was now very stable, and the partner had skilfully placed the pipes to skirt round the outside.

After a sweaty trek we finally arrived at the capped spring (see picture), and everything was in order. Whilst doing the trek up the hill, it struck me what back-breaking work carrying water up such hillsides must be. Before this scheme, the villagers had to trek 400m down the steep hill into the valley, and then back up again carrying containers of water.


I say ‘villagers’ but really I should have said ‘women’. Unfortunately, fetching water is seen as women’s work in most of the world. This is one key reason why water supply interventions are good for gender equality, freeing up women’s time to do other things, and meaning that girls aren’t kept away from school. The new tapstands in Bagoroto are all within 10m of the houses (see a photo of a tapstand at the top of this post), meaning that collecting water is no longer a chore.

The challenge now is making sure that the system is sustainable. East Timor has one of the worst failure rates of water schemes that I have ever encountered. Recent surveys by Plan and Oxfam suggest that up to two thirds of schemes fail within a year or two, which beats sub-Saharan Africa hands down. There are many reasons for this, which I’ll cover in another post. You can be sure however, that WaterAid Timor-Leste and its partners monitor their schemes carefully to pick up any issues as they arise.

Why am I in East Timor?

In my last post I set out why WaterAid is working here. But why I am here, a foreigner with no experience of the country or region? Paradoxically, the reason is that WaterAid’s policy is to employ local staff as far as possible, to strengthen the capacity of the sector in the long term.

Policy and advocacy work demands certain skills which are hard to find here due to the history (more on that later). I've worked on policy and advocacy for WaterAid in the UK for three years, supporting many of our country programmes across Africa and Asia. So, I am here on a 6-month secondment to train up a promising Timorese graduate, pass on my knowledge and experience, and set them on the right path.

WaterAid’s programme work in East Timor (which I summarise as ‘taps and toilets’) has been moving from strength to strength over the last 5 years, but policy and advocacy work are increasingly been seen as a priority. This is both in terms of the national context and the overall direction of WaterAid’s new global strategy for 2009-15

So what is policy and advocacy work? I tend to characterise is as efforts to influence what others in the water and sanitation sector are doing, but also the government’s broader development strategies (e.g. in health or education). Put simply, it means (i) making sure that water and sanitation is given the priority it deserves, and (ii) all the money allocated to it is being spent well.

To put that in context, WaterAid spends about US$1m a year on ‘taps and toilets’ in East Timor, but in 2011 approximately $80m will be spent on water and sanitation here by the government and donors. That makes WaterAid’s a fairly small proportion of all the money being spent. It is therefore a good investment to spend time influencing the ‘sector’ to ensure that the other $79m is spent well.

There is a lot to be done. Recent surveys by Oxfam and Plan indicated that up to two-thirds of new water systems here may break down within a year, an atrociously high figure caused by a number of factors. Furthermore, rumour has it that the government is set to increase its budget for water and sanitation from $19m in 2010 to close to $60m in 2011. Let’s be clear, that is excellent. This government has truly prioritised water and sanitation, recognising the low levels of access as one of the biggest barriers to development. But it remains to be seen whether the sector has the capacity to scale up that quickly.

In summary, I’m here for the next 6 months to support José our budding Policy and Advocacy Officer. We’ll be working hard to ensure that WaterAid’s knowledge and experience, built up over nearly 30 years, can contribute to a vibrant water and sanitation sector here in East Timor.

Why does WaterAid work in East Timor?

East Timor is a very poor country. Rates of access to water and sanitation here are amongst the lowest in the world. Consequently, WaterAid has prioritised it, and money has been flowing into programmes from WaterAid Australia for about 5 years.

The country’s official name is “Timor-Leste” which is in Portuguese, the national language (more on the linguistic contortions here later), but I’ll use “East Timor” because it’s the name most commonly known in the English-speaking world. East Timor is one of the world’s youngest nations, having had a particularly traumatic birth in 2002 (more on that in another post), and is a very poor country. According to a UNDP report earlier in 2010, 53% of Timorese live on less than $1.25 a day (PPP). [1]

Take a moment to think about how little $1.25 actually is, then consider that half the people here live on even less than that. This is the highest poverty rate in South East Asia, and close to the highest in Asia (there is no data for Afghanistan and Burma). To put things in perspective, East Timor is lower in the Human Development Index (HDI) than Uganda, Malawi and Bangladesh. For more on the country and its history, there are good overviews from Wikipedia and the BBC.

Despite its traumatic birth and recent instability, the country seems to be on quite a firm footing these days. People are optimistic, and there has not been any widespread violence since 2006. The economy is picking up, buoyed by recent successful oil exploration, but the majority of people are still desperately poor. There will most likely be a need for support from donors and NGOs for some time to come.

So, that’s why WaterAid is here. Why I am here will be covered in the next post…

[1] UNDP (2010) Asia-Pacific Human Development Report 2010