Delivery of Water To Households Far From Sources of Safe Water

The South African Child Labour Programme of Action provides that pilot projects should be run on the Delivery of water to households far from sources of safe water. The Survey of Activities of Young People(SAYP) undertaken in 1999 indicated that collecting fuel or fetching water are by far the most common work-related activity done by children in South Africa. South African stakeholders have indicated, in the consultative process that led to the Child Labour Programme of Action, that the fetching of water over long distances should be regarded as a priority, given its prevalence and associated hazards.

Accordingly to the Child Labour Programme of Action, this work should not be seen as child labour, a term which implies that someone benefits unduly from the work that children do. Poor households have little control over the distance to water from the homestead, and often have no alternative but to ask their children to help in carrying water. Therefore, stakeholders in the country indicated that fetching water should rather be seen as a priority form of child work that should be addressed by the government's programme to deliver water to all households by 2008.

By delivering water to such households, the extremely long periods spent by some children in collecting water could be reduced, thereby making more time available for schooling and other activities. It should also reduce the hazards they are exposed to.

Accordingly the Programme Towards the Elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour (TECL), a programme to kickstart action on the Child Labour Programme of Action, commissioned Dynacon Engineering and the Human Sciences Research Council to do research and design pilot projects with a focus on water delivery in distant areas. The purpose of the overall project is to investigate the phenomenon, to design and run pilot projects, and to develop and implement policy to assist in water delivery in such areas.

This project was run in the following stages:

Read more about Delivery Of Water To Households Far From Sources Of Safe Water:  Stage 1: Research and Design, Stage 2: Implementation of The Pilot Project, Stage 3: Development and Implementation of Policy, Participating Institutions

Famous quotes containing the words delivery, water, households, sources and/or safe:

    There was no speculation so promising, or at the same time so praisworthy, as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    it
    was my first doll that water went
    into and water came out of much
    earlier it was the diaper I wore
    and the dirt thereof and my
    mother hating me for it
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    Establishing limits, structure, rules, and expectations takes self-confidence on the part of parents. Parents need to recognize that they are the legitimate authority figures in their households and feel secure in that role.
    Karen Levine (20th century)

    Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.
    Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)

    It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)