Study on impact of fetching water on children

Conversations with young drawers of water

Children carrying water for household use are a familiar sight in South Africa’s rural areas. It was no surprise, therefore, when the national Survey of Activities of Young People (Statistics South Africa, 1999) established that this was by far the most common form of child work.

David Hemson of the Human Sciences Research Council was commissioned by the programme Towards the Elimination of worst forms of Child Labour (TECL) to explore how heavy this burden of work was in deep rural areas – and what harm it posed to the children involved in it.

Hemson chose four areas for his study, all lacking a piped water source and all featuring large numbers of children collecting water. The sites were Thoto and Malokela in Limpopo province, and Sunduza and Ngolotshe in KwaZulu-Natal. A total of 1 052 children in 366 households were interviewed.

On average, across all sites children spent 19.5 hours a week on household chores, and water carrying ranked as the most time-consuming, taking just under 16 hours a week. However, children in two of the villages – Malokela and Ngolotshe – had a particularly tough job, as the table below indicates.

Number of hours per week children spent on household chores

Activity	All areas	Thoto	Malokela	Sunduza	Ngolotshe
Water	15h 58m	10h 31m	27h 41m	11h 22m	18h 33m
Wood	3h 37m	2h 13m	3h 49m	4h 46m	3 h 27m
Housekeeping	1h 56 m	1h 23m	1h 59m	2h 30m	1h 29m
Total	19h 31m	12h 56m	30 53m	16h 26m	21h 17m

The impact of fetching water on children’s school attendance, sense of well-being and general health appeared to be related to how much time they spent on the chore. This in turn was dependent on the distance of the water source and how many trips they made daily to get water.

For example, 62% of children who made two or more trips a day to collect water reported that they missed school. The proportion of children who missed school among those who fetched water once a day was considerably lower, at 44%.

Similarly, children who fetched water two or more times a day were four times more likely than those doing a single trip to report that their health had got worse.

“While the health of most children is unaffected by collecting water, for a proportion of the children the activity seems to be having a negative impact,” Hemson observed.

Hemson described the children who reported that their health had worsened as a “vulnerable” group. They tended to spend the longest time collecting water and very frequently reported fatigue and sore necks and backs. Close to 605 had sought medical attention in the last few months. Slightly more than half were girls and most came from large households doing two or more trips a day to meet domestic water needs.

Hemson notes that children are exposed to double health jeopardy in terms of water borne diseases: They are exposed by having to drink poor quality water as well as by their labour in drawing and carrying this water. “Children collecting water for their families tend to be the most exposed (to diarrhoea, intestinal infections, typhoid and cholera) and the most deserving of remedial action, through direct support and improved delivery of water services.”

This study formed the foundation of a pilot project by TECL on prioritisation of water services.

Full text

Young drawers of water: The burden on children in rural South Africa. David Hemson