Tapping Into Fresh Water
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 9
10 November - 8 December 2008 ] By Genevieve Costigan
Two weeks spent in the tropical interior of Papua New Guinea working on water and sanitation problems convinced University of Melbourne student Anthony Kung that Engineering rather than Law was where his future lay.
Anthony Kung was one of 10 Environmental Engineering Design students who visited PNG recently on a two-week site visit to research and develop strategies for water infrastructure in the village of Ilahita.
Ilahita consists of a group of seven villages of about 3000 people in the Sepik region of north-eastern Papua New Guinea between the mountains and the sea. One of the largest villages in PNG, it lacks basic health care, education and a secure water supply. The students gathered information to aid the design of water and sanitation systems which will inform future European Union, NGO and local government development projects in Ilahita.
The project received one of 26 inaugural University of Melbourne dream large Knowledge Transfer student project grants awarded this year.
Dr Peter McGlynn, a partner in the project, established the Ilahita Melbourne Community Association in 2006 as a result of his desire to assist the community to improve the situation of the village and his childhood friendship with a local from Ilahita, Mr Harris Bein.
Dr McGlynn says that a contributing factor to the problems the village is facing is massive population growth. “The seven villages have almost merged as the population has gone through the roof – and traditional practices died off as Christian missionaries took over and traditional methods of controlling population, which had to do with social cycles and food production, have gone by the wayside,” he says.
The students were involved in several practical projects including building a clay scale model of the village as a way of facilitating community consultation, testing the feasibility of the villagers making their own bricks for building purposes and as a tradable commodity and teaching the villagers how to make a pump and install it in their well.
Their research revealed important issues in Ilahita such as the scarcity of water in the dry season, the lack of money to buy soap leading to sanitation problems and accessibility to water. “The women collect all the water and they climb up slippery tracks with three pots of water, a baby in their arms and a bag on their backs,” reports Anthony Kung.
Dr Graham Moore (Civil and Environmental Engineering) believes the Ilahita project gives students a chance to experience development work at first hand.
He says a goal of the project was for students to learn from the villagers of Ilahita and for the villagers to learn from the students. Another but less obvious outcome has been the flow of knowledge from the students who went to PNG to those who didn’t go but will complete their engineering design projects this year.
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