Contracts are sheets to start a fire with

As I was explaining in a previous post, I am now working at analysing the problems and challenges of a big water development project for rural communities in Machinga. About a month ago, the two contractors selected to do the drilling work and borehole rehabilitation started their work. Since then, a lot of problems were observed, some less important and some major ones. Here is a summary of the issues faced and my reflections on all this.

First I need to explain to give you background on the contractors selection. There was a tender document issued by the client (National Water Development Program) and the consultant. About 25 contractors applied some from Malawi. some from other countries. Two were selected by the NWDP based on prices probably and maybe politics and contacts! Both companies are from Malawi. Then a contract with the scope of work, specification and methodology for the different part of the work to be done (drilling, development, pumping test, water quality test, concrete work, pump installation and borehole remediation) was written and signed by all parties.
Now back to the problems.

• First, it seems like the actual contract was put together really fast by the NWDP. They certainly did a lot of copy and paste from previous contracts. Some section or specification of the contract do not apply to the present project, there are many contractions about the quantities, the material, the dimensions and the tests times, the pages are not numbered, the sections are in the wrong order (section 3.4.1 is before section 3.3.8 and after section 3.4.3). This contract is really hard to make sense of and be clear about what is expected, and it’s hardly possible to refer to something in it and have someone look it up as there is no page number and the sections are not necessary in the right place. I looks like this contract was put together by the NWDP because they were required by the consultant and the project to have a contract but not because it is important to them for liability and accountability of the contractors.  
• The contractor on site never saw or read the contract and specifications so they do their work as usual. They do the work as steps but they don’t understand why things need to be done. Their judgement and decisions are questionable. The consultant has supervisors on site but normally field supervisors in Malawi are not asked to interact with the contractors they are only ask to report the work, so they are not respected by the drillers who normally do their things the way they want and the way they always do without having someone on their back to check and do testing. It turns out that both the consultant and the hydrogeologist on this project are foreigners and have high technical skills and knowledge (they are both experienced to work in African countries). They are used to high standards, liability, accountability and rigorous methods, so they want their field supervisors to take the lead and decisions over the drillers’ work. This is not working so well and they need a lot of support and directions from the office as they are not used to do this.
• The project also targets the capacity building of the District members, so the Water Monitoring Assistants of each area (who were hired for this project specifically, so they are young and new to this job in most cases) are invited to go on site and learn how to do the filed supervision. Most of them are only going to get the field allowances and don’t really mind the knowledge. They often show up on site drunk (they have to get their on their motorcycle) or sit down in the shade and play games with the community. They are given a great chance to learn and develop skills, but they don’t seem to mind it, all they care about is the allowance money they get. Allowances are one of the worst things that some donors/development partners/NGOs brought to this country. Now they won’t do any work without it. It’s sad and frustrating.
• The contractors don’t want to follow the specifications and methodology that were in the contract. They keep arguing about everything that is slightly different then the way they normally do things. Their answer is that they always do it this way! No one seems to know how to supervise field work and understand the purpose of the work and good methods. Here are some examples of common practices that we are trying to break and change:
  • the hydrogeological survey is done improperly and only in the area where the communities would want their borehole. This leads to a lot of dry boreholes;
  • most of the time the borehole gets drilled using air rotary even if the soil is soft, unstable and saturated, they often don’t have a mud pump;
  • they don’t take conductivity measurement of the water strikes even though many boreholes i Malawi are salty or brackish water that communities can’t use;
  • they don’t use centralisers when they install the screens and/or install the pipes under tension;
  • they put gravel pack (that is normally un-sieved) all the way to the top or 3 meters from the surface and they eventually fill the rest with grout;
  • I say eventually because the grouting, when done, is taken care of by another team, the pumping test team or sometimes even later with the civil work team when they do the concrete apron around the Afridev pump. This means that the top part of the annular space remains unfilled for a few days or weeks sometimes. The soil sloughs back in and the grout seal becomes even thinner. This also means that they do the development and pumping test without having the annular space filled and without any seal. The development is done by blowing air for two hours using the compressor, this forces the water out of the borehole. The idea is to develop until the water is cleaned form the silt from the surrounding aquifer and gravel pack and sediments from the drilling work. The main problem here is that the development water is not being diverted anywhere so it falls directly around the BH (the unsealed and uncompleted BH) bringing all the silt and fine particles as well as the mud back into the gravel pack (see picture below). Also, static water level before and after development are often not measured and reported;
  • the pumping test is being done a few days later using a submersible pump and a generator. Some pumps can’t be adjusted or the gage is broken so they are pumping at a set rate. Most of the times, the problem is that the people doing the work don’t understand what and why they are doing this test. They lower the pump almost at the bottom of the BH, they set the pump at a high rate without taking into consideration the estimate natural flow rate from the fractures that was measured during drilling, they pump for 4 hours at the same rate, take water level measurements at a set time and hope that the borehole won’t get dry due to the crazy drawdown created by the over pumping. They don’t try to adjust the flowrate to get to the actual dynamic water level, which is where the drawdown would stabilize indicating that the rate of pumping is the rate of recharge of the aquifer. They do a recovery test, pack their equipment and leave;
  • they don’t want to take water samples to test the quality of the water (bacteria, metals, salinity, chemical fertilisers, etc.) because they don’t know how to send it to a lab and don’t want to pay the cost of shipping and analysis;
  • etc.

There are many other problems but this is to give you an idea of how hard, slow and frustrating field work can get here.

The consultant and the hydrogeologist on this project want the contractor to do the things the way that we would normally do them at home. They are negotiable on small irrelevant things, but not on more important ones. The consultant in charge works for a German firm and he doesn’t want to lower his standards, he wants communities to benefit from a good, sustainable BH with clean water. But this leads to an everyday fight and many challenges.

To add to the rest of the problems, there is a severe fuel shortage in the country over the last year, so getting diesel for the drill rig, support truck, compressor and generator as well as for transportation is more and more complicated so the contractors often complain that they can’t work because they don’t have enough diesel. If the rig gets broken they don’t have the money and/or fuel to get it back to their shop and fix it. They also say that because of the fuel shortage, it is really hard and expensive to get cement to grout and do the concrete apron around the Afridev pump following the specification and ratio.

The fuel situation also affects the supervisors and hydrogeologist. They have a lot of trouble to get on site, especially when the villages are far from Liwonde. The field supervisors try to get rides with the drillers or sleep in a tent on site, but the whole situation is extremely stressful and challenging. Sometimes there is no fuel for over three weeks and when it comes, it is often not a full tank, so not many people will be able to get it. Black market fuel is available but outrageously expensive (900 MK/Liter = 6 USD/Liters) and it creates a bad cycle to support this.

That’s it for now, but there would be so many other things that I would like to share on this, as there are a lot of things that are wrong and preventing change or better ways from happening. I only mentioned the contractor part in this blog, but there is as much if not more to be said on the client/national government’s side. Another time maybe.
To be continued.

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Merry Christmas everyone and have a great holiday time. I’ll be on holiday for three weeks and won’t have my computer with me. Enjoy good food and delicious wine for me. I’m going on a kayak camping trip with some friends on the Island around Cape Maclear, then on a trip around Malawi with my friend Cath who will be visiting me for two weeks. I’m quite excited for this. I need a break. Working here is tough, frustrating and really exhausting. Plus it’s been so so hot lately that I can’t sleep at night and I have no energy the rest of the day. No rain yet, the people in Liwonde and other areas are starting to be worried about their seeds and growing seasons. For the temperature to cool down a little and for the seeds to not be wasted, I wish them rain soon!

Cheers,
Ge

Virtual world and business

Yesterday I was at the market having lunch and chatting with the 20 years old boy who cooks and runs the place. He saw me on my iPhone checking my emails and then he started asking questions about Facebook and internet and emails, confused and thinking they were all the same. I explained to him that the internet was like a library and Facebook one of the books you can look at. He asked me what else we can do on the internet aside from FB and emails. I mentioned that we can do research and read about almost everything, that we can plan a trip, read news, check the weather, that we can search and apply for jobs, that we can buy things and pay our bills online. Then he really got confused. I remembered having a similar discussion with my good friend Memory in Salima about the possibility to use internet to do payments and order things. Just like the boy at the market, she couldn’t really get how that works either. She is bright and educated, waiting to get her exams results to apply to university in South Africa, but like many others here, she never had access to a computer and doesn’t really know what to do with them and she is even more confused by internet. They write their papers by hand, just like we used to 15 years ago. Some people at the District level do use computers for their work but when it comes to sharing the report with others or editing it, they need to sit down altogether on one computer or with a projector to discuss the changes or the report. And when people need to send a report to the client, a contractor or someone else (sometimes in another city that can be many hours away), they need to deliver it in person as the internet is not reliable or the other party doesn't have an email account or a computer. 

But there is more to this story than the lack of access to a computer. I realized that over not understanding the possibilities that internet offers really well, they don’t understand credit cards. They don’t have this here. They have bank card, but can only use them to withdraw money at the ATM and most people don’t even have a bank account. Actually, credit cards are hardly accepted anywhere even in the touristic places. It brought me back to the fact that Malawians, like a lot of other people in Africa or developing countries don’t have access to money as easily as we do and their management of money is terrible. Borrowing money is tricky here, loans are rare and credit is practically inexistent. If you go to the tailor and need a zipper or material, you need to provide the money up front or buy it yourself because they won’t have the money to buy your zipper to complete the work. Same for the plumber that came to my place to repair the shower, he had no money to go buy the two pieces of metals he needed to do the repair, he needed money upfront. Most businesses in Malawi work like this, it seems normal and functional to them. Even drillers can’t fixe their equipment if it breaks, it usually takes a long time and they ask you to advance some money to assist them. If you buy something at the market or a small shop and return the next day to exchange it because it doesn’t fit, for example a light bulb or a socket, chances are they won’t have the money and will have to give you a store credit.

So imagine how hard it gets when it comes to asking communities who have boreholes or taps to open a bank account and raise money to do eventual repairs or maintenance. They often fail to do so and end up having a non functional waterpoint and prefer to wait for the next unorganized NGO or nice charity organization to come and fix it for them or install a new borehole right next to the other one. In the meantime, they either withdraw water from a neighbouring village's waterpoint or go to an unprotected water source. Way to go to distort the system, confuse communities and make them dependant of donors instead of learning how to be self sufficient! Once again, Malawi doesn’t just need more boreholes and superheros (ie. random unorganized donors who think that installing a few new boreholes here and there is the key solution), it needs to have follow ups and support to communities to help them raise the money and develop connection to an area mechanic to get their waterpoint fixed. They need to understand the value of having clean and potable water and that they need to contribute money for that to be sustainable because no my friends, boreholes and pumps are not good forever and are far from being invincible. Communities need to stop hoping and thinking that an organisation will come to their rescue all the time. Sometimes good intentions from donors who have a weak understanding of a system or too much money to spend undermine the efficiency and sustainability of this system. This especially happens with charity and religious organizations who can raise a lot of money, but will want to do the work to fast and themselves. If they had a better understanding and if more data on borehole location and functionality was being gathered, those organizations could spend their money in a more sustainable and equitable way to benefit the communities instead of weakening them. There needs to be a better way to organize how donors and organizations do their work here, there needs to be regulations from the National Government and the District Government need to get more involved on what is happening in the district. EWB is trying hard and on many levels to advocate for all this to change and for the water development and sanitation sector to improve. But for this big stormy, corrupted and slow system to face and accept their mistakes and change, there is still a long way to go! Although there is hope…