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Did I mean ‘reliable’? no. Not necessarily. It seems logical to demand that water pumps be reliable, right? Shouldn’t the goal be to make water pumps that are of such a good quality, that they don’t need any maintenance, and will never break down? Of course, this goal can never be reached because everything that moves breaks down eventually. But should we at least strive to make a pump that fails only after a very long time, say 10-15 years? Surprisingly, this seemingly logical idea has some unintended and potentially troublesome consequences.
As an example, consider one of the most common pumps in AficaAfrica, the [http://www.rwsn.ch/prarticle.2005-10-25.9856177177/prarticle.2005-10-26.2582788867/prarticle.2008-12-04.2105225472/prarticle.2009-02-06.9581575564 Afridev pump]. It is very durable, sturdy, breaks down only after 10 years or so. A very nice, well-designed pump. In all of AficaAfrica, some 30% of these pumps are broken today, in some countries 70%, and they are not being reparedrepaired. What happened? And let’s be clear: the problem is not that things break down, because everything breaks down eventually. The problem is that they are not being reparedrepaired.
[[Image:afridev.jpg|thumb|center|300px|A broken Afridev pump, which cost 1000$ when it was placed. Can this be avoided? Picture Henk Holtslag]]
====Is reliable really reliable?====
Hard-won experience by field experts shows that one of the main shortcomings of this type of pump is, counter intuitively, exactly the long time before maintenance or repair is necessary. Because they have to last a long time before failure or maintenance, they are heavy, sturdy, of high quality, and because they are so, they are expensive. Because of the high quality standard, the pumps are produced in countries that have the ability to do so, and need costly transport to their destination. The high costs of such pumps (typicaly typically about 1000$ or more) means that the pumps are communal, because no government, let alone villagers themselves, can pay for such a pump for each family. And here the Tragedy of the Commons raises its ugly head.
Say, you live in a village, which has a communal w=ater water pump. It was installed by some organization which you don’t quite remember about ten years ago, and it has worked fine ever since. At the time, you seem to recall, a water committee was formed which was supposed to collect money each month to cover the cost of maintenance and repairs, but after three years of good operation of the pump, this committee stopped its activities and the money was used for other purposes. Unfortunately, today the pump is broken, and needs an expensive repair with spare parts from the capital of the country. Who is going to pay? The problem is that high-quality communal pumps often just don’t fit the technology management capacity of a village.
[[Image:ropepump7.jpg|thumb|center|300px|A ropepumprope pump, which cost $100 when it was placed. Here used by about 10 families. Picture Henk Holtslag.]]
====Repairable pumps====
Studies in Nicaragua show that 95% of rope pumps stay in use after 5 years, because they are maintained by the users. In Bolivia, over 20.000 EMAS pumps are owned by single families, who paid for the pump themselves, without any subsidy.
Of course, you cannot expect the same level of service from a 10$ PVC pump, a 50$ rope pump, or a 1000$ Afridev pump. And if the water is really deep, there might be no alternative for a communal pump. But it would be good to start focussing focusing on what reliability really means: things should be available, and therefore easy to fix. Simple and cheap waterpumps water pumps aimed at single families to small groups of families have great advantages, and deserve a lot more attention then they are getting now.
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