Papua New Guinea
Context
Papua New Guinea is a country made up of several islands on the Western rim of the Pacific Ocean. A population of under six million live in mountainous and mostly inaccessible terrain. Most people live in rural areas with limited access to clean water or sanitation and seasonal water shortages are also common throughout the country.
Only 40% of the population has access to clean water and 45% have access to sanitation.
Monsoon season lasts about four months every year and severe droughts are caused periodically by the El Niño effect, making water supplies unreliable.
80% of the population lives in hard to reach rural areas with little or no public services.
What has WaterAid achieved?
- In 2008, WaterAid successfully worked with local NGO HELP Resources to complete a village water system.
- WaterAid spent AUS$247,085 helping 15,175 people access clean water and 4,330 access sanitation services.
- WaterAid in Australia is working in partnership with ATProjects to install water and sanitation services in all 216 primary/secondary schools in the Eastern Highlands province.
WaterAid's programme work in Papua New Guinea
WaterAid started its programme in Papua New Guinea in 2005, working with partners to provide improved water supplies, sanitation and hygiene education.
WaterAid also conducted research in 2008 into why menstruating girls were dropping out of school and has developed female-friendly sanitation services.
This awareness project was also accompanied by films and radio programmes promoting awareness of hand-washing and hygiene.
Papua New Guinea update
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The finished latrines.
Credit: WaterAid Australia |
WaterAid's International Program Manager, Peter Dwan, has recently returned from a fact finding mission in PNG. While there he reviewed the outcomes and lessons learnt from WaterAid Australia's first completed project in the Eastern Highlands of PNG and began planning for future projects. WaterAid Australia is working in conjunction with ATprojects (based in Goroke, PNG) and Oxfam NZ to provide water, sanitation and hygiene education to schools in the Eastern Highlands.
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Case study
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Credit: WaterAid /
Rosie Wheen |
Rita 35, Kombagora village Papua New Guinea.
My whole life I have walked for an hour everyday to collect water from the creek for my family, now I will walk maybe five minutes. The village's new water taps will help me a lot. It will give me time to look after my younger children and I will have more time to spend at the market, earning money for their education.
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Papua New Guinea Sources:
World Bank (2011) World Development Indicators database - databank.worldbank.org, WHO / UNICEF (2010) Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report 2010, UNDP (2011), Human Development Report 2011
NB. Official statistics tend to understate the extent of water and sanitation problems, sometimes by a large factor. There are not sufficient resources available for accurate monitoring of either population or coverage. Varying definitions of water and sanitation coverage are used and national figures mask large regional differences in coverage.
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What we do
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