Turning water into child's play in parched schools

By Sanjay Sharma, Indo-Asian News service, [RxPG] Bhopal, Jan 17 -

They also performed plays on different themes, including re-using water, water safety, rainwater harvesting and sanitation..


School is a happy proposition now for many children in Madhya Pradesh. No longer do they have to stay with parched throats or go without using toilets the whole day.In Dhar district, where many children - particularly girls - had stopped going to school for want of drinking water and sanitation facilities, Unicef has helped install 'play pumps' in educational institutions.

The 'play pump' is a children's merry-go-round that pumps out clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time it is spun.'Since cavorting on a roundabout has always been fun for children, they enjoy doing it and clean borehole water is pumped into water storage tanks,' explained Unicef communications officer Anil Gulati.

So Unicef, which has helped the district administration provide the play pumps, has not only solved the water problem but also brought in a means of entertainment for schoolchildren.'Earlier I used to run away from school for want of water and bathrooms, but now I don't feel like going back home because we have this facility there and can play with it as well,' said Kavita, a tribal girl studying in Class 8.

The children earlier used to go without drinking water during the day, with 90 percent of schools in Dhar having no potable water or sanitation facilities.'The play pumps project was started on an experimental basis in March 2005. Since then several such pumps have been installed in districts like Dhar, Jhabua, Vidisha and Guna. There are plans to provide 40 such pumps in different parts of the state,' said Samuel Godfrey, a Unicef official.

The water pumped into tanks - the process doesn't require electricity - is distributed among schools and communities in the area.The device is thus a boon not only for schoolchildren but also for the people living in the surroundings, mainly women who have the responsibility of collecting water.'Each morning the women used to set off to the nearest borehole to collect water. They used leaky and often contaminated hand-pumps to collect water and then carry it all back. It was exhausting and time-consuming work. Now they can spend the same time at home looking after their kids and teaching them,' Gulati said.

The groundwater level in these districts is too low and whatever little water is available is highly contaminated with fluoride.The water table has fallen from an average of 10 metres to 80 metres. This has led to higher concentration of contaminants like fluoride, arsenic and iron in groundwater. A total of 324 villages are affected with this problem in tribal-dominated Dhar district alone.Unicef and the state's Public Health Engineering Department are promoting projects on water reuse, water safety and sanitation in 22 schools of Dhar and Jhabua.

Children participating in a convention on water security and sanitation here this week expressed their happiness by presenting the very songs they sing while playing with the pumps in their schools in Dhar.They also performed plays on different themes, including re-using water, water safety, rainwater harvesting and sanitation.'Such projects, aimed at promoting recycling of grey water for its reuse in improving sanitation, are being implemented in the tribal schools of Dhar. These also promote rain water harvesting and increase the focus on sanitation,' said Unicef state representative Hamid El Bashir.