A donated water system is only as good as the arrangement that keeps it running. Two communities near Mandalay have spent a year proving they can run theirs.
When disasters cut off safe water supplies, responses focus on short-term solutions: trucking, bottled distributions and purification tablets. Responders assume that local services exist and will be restored quickly.
In Myanmar that assumption does not hold. The March 2025 earthquake damaged water systems, wells and pipelines across the centre of the country. It collapsed over 42,000 toilets and contaminated community tanks and wells. At least 4.3 million people needed help to access safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Six months later, the ICRC still described safe water as among the most urgent and persistent problems. With Myanmar in the midst of protracted political, economic and humanitarian crises, nobody expected local services to be swiftly restored.
Community Partners International (CPI) worked with local partners on the water response. The question was not only how to get clean water to people that month. It was what would still be working in five years. The answer was community-managed water systems with their own revenue, accounts and operators.
This article follows two of those systems, revisited roughly a year on. One is a 500-litre system at a monastery with an attached monastic school. The other is a 1,000-litre system in a village. Both are near Mandalay.
Water access in Myanmar was already fragile before the earthquake. Around 40% of households lacked easy access to safely managed drinking water. That means water from an improved source on the premises, available when needed and free from contamination. More than one household in ten relied on surface water or an unimproved source. Nearly 40% lacked safely managed sanitation, and one household in three lacked basic hygiene services.
The consequences fall hardest on children. Myanmar’s under-five death rate linked to unsafe water, sanitation and handwashing stands at 39 per 1,000 live births. That is more than 1.7 times the Southeast Asian average. Cholera and acute watery diarrhea remain a persistent risk.
An earthquake sharply intensifies these challenges. Damaged toilets and septic tanks contaminate water sources and power cuts stop pumps, putting safe water, sanitation and hygiene further out of reach.
Both water purification systems use solar-powered reverse osmosis. That removes bacteria, viruses, dissolved salts, soluble organic compounds and heavy metals. Siting mattered as much as the technology. Each sits within reach on foot or by bicycle. Somebody is there every day to look after it.
Charging for water is a compromise rather than an ideal. Safe drinking water is a basic right. Where people earn their income daily, any price is a barrier for somebody. The alternative was a system that stopped when the first filter wore out, with no money for another.
At the monastery, the arrangement was clear from the start. “When the system was initially installed, the team explained that while they were donating the purification system, the responsibility for its long-term upkeep and maintenance would fall to us,” says U Thumana, the presiding monk. “They suggested that we could set a price and sell the water to generate funds for maintenance, and that is the approach we have adopted.”
The monastery ran the water free for about a week, then began charging 500 kyats for a 20-litre container. The price has since gone up to 1,500 kyats for two containers. The increase came from the community, once they saw the running costs.
That price sits against a market moving the other way. Disasters push the cost of essentials up, through scarcity, damaged supply routes and opportunistic selling. Bottled water is one of the first things to rise. The local commercial price runs from 1,500 to 2,000 kyats for a single container. Before the system arrived it was 1,200. Households collecting at the monastery pay less than half that.
“Many local residents rely on daily wages, making it difficult for them to afford 20 liters of purified water for 1,500 kyats,” U Thumana says. “However, with our pricing of 1,500 kyats for two containers, it becomes much more affordable and convenient for them.”
The village chose a subscription instead. “By community consensus, we charge each household 3,000 kyats per month, allowing them to collect as much water as they need,” says U Soe, the schoolteacher who runs the system there. Roughly 150 of the village’s 220 households use it, from a population of about 700.
The communities set both prices, not the installers.
The financing only works if people believe the money goes where it is supposed to.
In the village, the answer was a blackboard. “To ensure financial transparency, we set up a blackboard to display our accounts, including repair costs and individual contributions, right in front of the water purification unit,” U Soe says.
That drew on something the village already did. “In our village, we have a custom of making public announcements and posting notices on a blackboard in the village center to keep everyone informed,” he says. “As a result, we handle everything transparently, including monthly contributions and expense settlements for the water service. Because of this, families are more than willing to pay for the purified water.”
The monastery runs on written records U Thumana keeps himself. Those records let the community arrive at the price. They understand the expenses involved, he says, because he writes them down.
The costs are not trivial. Filters run to 12,500 kyats each, and the monastery bought fifty at once. Coarse salt needs dissolving and replacing every few days. The monastery uses five viss at a time, around eight kilograms. The village gets through 50 viss a month. Electricity for pumping comes out of the maintenance fund, topped up by U Thumana personally when it falls short.
Eight months after installation, in May, the monastery’s system failed completely. The inverter burned out, and the repair bill came to more than 5.8 million kyats.
The cause was an installation fault. A solar technician found intermediary components missing from the original setup. The mismatch between load and capacity had made the unit overheat and catch fire. The equipment was still under a one-year warranty.
U Thumana sent the inverter back to the company. The repair would take about a week, and a repaired unit would perform less well than a new one. So he used the money the water had earned, travelled to Mandalay, and bought a new inverter and battery outright.
The repair was possible because the system had been earning for eight months. The same failure in the first weeks would have found no fund to draw on. A 5.8 million kyat bill is beyond most community budgets in any case. The arrangement held, but it was not comfortable.
Nobody arrived knowing how to operate reverse osmosis. “It took us about six months to fully understand the proper operation of the equipment and how to use it without damaging the elements,” U Thumana says.
The learning was practical and specific. Raw well water pumped straight into the unit loaded the filters with sediment and wore them out fast. The monastery now pumps into a brick tank first. The sediment settles, and only the clear water goes through. The system is not run when solar output drops below 30%. Grid electricity is intermittent, so they pump into the storage tank at night and purify in the morning.
Theft is a live concern, with solar panel and inverter prices rising. They lock the equipment immediately after use. U Thumana and one student hold the key, and they check it at night.
The village has had two breakdowns in the year since installation, repaired each time without interruption to supply. “We are truly thankful that for over a year, the supply of purified water has not been interrupted for even a single day,” U Soe says.
He is also thinking past himself. “I operate the water pump before heading to school and again when I return in the evening,” he says. “Currently, I handle the operation myself, but I plan to teach young people how to run it later.”
Before the village system, people drew from the river or queued in a neighbouring village. “In the past, we used to drink river water or fetch clean water from a nearby village,” one villager says. “The water supply station operated on a schedule, and although it wasn’t very far away, we had to queue with our motorcycles to wait for it.” The river had become unusable as wastewater was discharged into it.
The alternative was not as clean as it appeared either. “The water from the old source was not actually purified, it was merely clear water, which we had no choice to use for drinking,” U Soe says.
Now 500 litres go out in the morning and 500 in the evening. “Since the water is purified, everyone now drinks it exclusively. It tastes and smells good and is free from excess lime and salt content,” he says. Households have built small wooden carts to move their containers.
The collecting falls along familiar lines. “It is mostly the women in the households who fetch the water, but sometimes the men or children carry it back when they return from work,” another villager says. “We take turns queuing for the water, ensuring that everyone has access to this vital resource.”
At the monastery, the system supplies a monastic school of more than 150 pupils. The school charges no fees, and had been buying four or five 20-litre bottles a day. Residents of ten surrounding wards now collect there too, arriving by bicycle or motorbike. “When water is available, they collect it in their own containers, as they appreciate the taste,” U Thumana says. Daily output is 500 litres, and hot weather can empty it in a day. A small sign goes up when the supply runs out.
Revenue first. Each system has an income stream the users themselves agreed. That money paid for the monastery’s new inverter and the village’s filters.
Then transparency, in a form the community already recognised. A blackboard in the village centre and a written ledger in the monastery do the same job. People can see that the money they hand over comes back as water.
A named operator matters too. U Soe runs the pump around his teaching day. U Thumana runs his with a student.
And siting determined access. Both sit close to the people who use them, with somebody present to watch over them daily.
None of this removes the strain, and none of it should be mistaken for a solution to the underlying problem. U Thumana still covers electricity shortfalls himself. Households are paying for water that a functioning public supply would provide. That payment comes out of already-stretched incomes. Cost recovery works here because the alternative was nothing, not because it is what these communities should have to do.
What it has bought is continuity. A year on, both systems produce water every day. The people running them are planning for the next decade, not the next funding cycle.
“We are committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the water purification system,” U Thumana says.
Community Partners International (CPI) strengthens, equips and connects local organizations in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand providing health, humanitarian relief and well-being services to conflict- and poverty-affected communities.
Support our mission: https://cpintl.org/ways-to-give/give
Δ
Thank you for subscribing! We will update you on impacts and milestones as we empower vulnerable communities in Asia to meet their essential health, humanitarian, and sustainable development needs.
