Water for Life Project

In a large project costing nearly £100,000 our trustee Chris Faldon has been able to see through from beginning to completion a much improved hospital water supply.

With the help of Paul Splint from MSG, a Dutch organisation that also supports St Francis Hospital, we laid 7km of new PVC pipes along, drilled four new bore holes and erected three large 10000 litre PVC tanks. Over 140 properties across the hospital site were connected late December 2017 with a vast improvement noted by users. Mike Baird from Scottish Water was involved in providing valuable technical advice. 

In May 2019 the final phase was completed. Consumption meters were installed with the intention of household and commercial users being charged a small monthly sum to draw the water to assist with on-going maintenance costs.  In 2022 President Hichilema launched a Zambia Water Investment programme (2020-2030). He recently instructed the Eastern Water & Sanitation Company to connect the public supply to the hospital. Work is on-going for this. For the forseeable future the hospital supply will be still vital since charges for the public supply are likely to introduce significant cost pressures.

The successful completion of the 'Water For Life' project in conjunction with the public supply to areas of the hospital holds out hope that a sustainable development across the whole site will now provide safe, clean and reliable water for years to come.

Dig deeper:

Hand dug pipeline
Storage - old and new
Plans in place
Water storage
Old water tank
New meter inspection chamber
New water meter