Coverage and application



From family level to community impact. Coverage and application.


Presentation made at the Rope Pump Policy Workshop by Henk Alberts, Technology Transfer Division, Bombas de Mecate, 20 minutes


First let's go back to 1990 when the first commercializing of the rope pump to the private sector took place. The pump was bought by exclusively families and farmers for the dual use to provide water for families and their cattle. The abundant water availability induced also to some irrigation applications at small plots. Although it was no big business and a lot of promotion around the country still had to be done it was already clear that the production and installation of rope pumps could be a sustainable business. In 1993 the first NGO's included the rope pump in their programmes for application again in agriculture or for Water and Sanitation purposes. Around 1995 the National Water and Sanitation Institute included the rope pump as an additional option in rural water supply.
On this scheme we see that there are basically two sectors, the rural water supply and agriculture purposes. The rural water supply applications can be found through two applications. The community handpumps, here we find the national water & sanitation Institute and the different bilateral and multilateral organizations. Thus the national GAR (Gerencia de acuaductos rurales) UNICEF, CARE, COSUDE and others. The number of users per well is about one hundred. A high quality rope pump is required to be able to satisfy the demand of this sector and open this market. The indication on the top right of "required technologic level" in this scheme is the quality required to be able to open this market. The second rural water supply application is found through the family well handpump, this is a private sector market and high numbers are also installed through a variety of organizations. To mention some of them, Save the Children, Medicins sans Frontières, Foster parents, Action Against Hunger, plus several bilateral organizations again. Here I indicated that a medium quality is required to open this market.
The rope pump is used in the agriculture too. Small scale irrigation is an increasing market and many rural development projects which were using credit schemes to introduce the rope pump, managed to have an almost 100% recovery of the capital thanks to income generation through small scale irrigation. The required technology level is relatively low as mostly shallow wells are involved. Many rope pump development initiatives around the world have focussed on this market in their initial phase.
And of course cattle watering is an important market segment. Important because it is an almost exclusively private sector market. The rope pump should have a relative good quality to convince these farmers, indicated in the scheme as ‘medium technology level is required'. Although of course only high quality is installed in all applications.
Conclusion: The rope pump has many applications and the water provision can be part of it, if sufficient quality can be guaranteed. A second conclusion is that the rope pump is used at community wells and because of its low cost and easy maintenance it has a wide spread use at family wells too. Coverage of family wells with the traditional pumps is practically imperative because the costs involved. Thus here we see that the rope pump can additionally cover the disperse living population through their family wells.
<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next >>