The Search for Water
By Aung Myo

Summer brings with it the search for better access to drinking water, especially in the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar that was hit by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. More than 5,000 ponds and 3,000 hand-dug wells in the delta area, the usual sources of water for local communities, were also destroyed by Nargis.

While the United Nations standard for drinking water per person per day is a minimum of three litres, only 35 percent of households of cyclone-affected areas of the delta meet this requirement, according to statistics of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) Tripartite Core Group. Many local residents still rely also on springs, creeks and rivers for drinking water, regardless of the quality of that water.