Ten experts from across Thames Water recently headed to Malawi as part of the ‘Thames Love Malawi’ programme - a four-year partnership between the utility and WaterAid which will raise £2 million to support water and sanitation projects.
The water company is the first from any company in the UK to send a team of operational experts into a developing nation, in tandem with WaterAid.
The focus of the trip was peer-to-peer support, as the Thames Water experts offered advice and expertise to their counterparts at the Central Region Water Board of Malawi (CRWB) on how to improve the country’s water and sewage networks.
Anthony Crawford, chairman of Thames Water’s WaterAid committee, said:
“It’s such a privilege to have been able to come out here to Malawi and see what a real difference we can make.
“The relationships that have been forged here will last for a lifetime and plans are already in place to continue this mutual learning experience in the coming weeks and months.”
It was the first time in the company’s relationship with WaterAid it has sent operational personnel on a trip abroad, rather than a team to report back on where the money is being spent, a real sea-change in the strategy in Malawi.
The team flew at the start of September and were based in the towns of Kasungu and Mponele with each member developing their own training materials.
During the trip, they held classroom-based training sessions for 50 water board employees, plus went on several site trips.
The experts helped implement the first ever district metered area (DMA) in the country, helped stop a serious leakage problem on the network, and help restore the water supply to a small village for the first time in three months.
They also helped optimise the water treatment works to boost water production in the town, helping the CRWB team understand principles, systems and processes in order to allow them to use what they have to maximum effect.
Paresh Kavia, one of the Thames Water experts who went on the trip, said:
“There’s something really special going on in this programme, and this is just the start.
“We want to do a lot more in the sanitation service space, and have started to identify where we can kick off with that next year, and build on the training this team has delivered – the deployment of listening sticks and step testing, for example, will open up a whole new area of possibilities. “
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