Roxana Delgado, Las Dignas & Ana Ella Gomez, Centro de Defensa de los Consumidores

For the women of Soyapango, a populous municipality on the periphery of El Salvador’s capital San Salvador, the problem of access to water has turned the world upside-down. As the scarcity of and high prices on water require women to seek new economic roles that are often found through employment in the low-paying informal sector (which includes professions like prostitution), the everyday struggle over water is slowly corrupting the Salvadoran institution of family. Many of these women are heads-of-households as well due to the phenomenon of irresponsible fathers, and they must work even more to increase their income to ensure access to water, in addition to providing household and maternal labor.

Soyapango, with a population of 289,553 people, is one of the most populous municipalities around San Salvador. For decades, the inhabitants of Soyapango have been confronted with recurring problems with the delivery of potable water, a service which is supposed to be administered by the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewerage (ANDA). ANDA is the autonomous state agency with most of the responsibility for the administration and operation of the potable water system in El Salvador. The biggest problem is that water service delivery is generally only provided between 10 and 15 days at a time, and ANDA has not responded to this problem. In addition, there are significant unidentified charges on water bills, which average about $5.25 a month per family. There are also concerns about the quality of water delivered. Official figures state that nationally scarcely 24.18 percent of the population receives piped water that is considered fit for human consumption. In 1999, El Salvador had the second highest level of infant mortality in Central American due to intestinal infections and diarrhea.

Nationally, water service is currently delivered by a diverse group of providers, which includes utilities run by the state, private firms, municipalities, and cooperatives. The state operator, ANDA, is the primary provider of water and sanitation services, with coverage extending to 172 municipalities out of the 262 existing in the country. Despite being a government agency, ANDA does not regulate or control the behavior of the other service providers, leaving a significant problem in the quality of service provided.

According to reports from ANDA, in 2002 less than 53.3 percent of the population in the country had access to any piped water. Of those with access, 84.2 percent lived in urban areas and 21.2 percent in rural areas. Other sources estimate that of the percentage without piped water, 8.4 percent obtain water from public standpipes, 6.87 percent from tanker trucks, 11.26 percent from wells, 8.27 percent from streams or ponds and 7.34 percent from rainwater or from friends or family. These figures show that El Salvador is the country with the lowest average coverage in Central America and the forth lowest in Latin America. Most importantly, however, there is one more figure that implicates itself in every one mentioned previously: That is, 100 percent of the time it is women whom are primarily affected by these water inequities. It is women who work extra to buy water from tanker trucks, women who stand in line for hours at public standpipes, women who walk miles to collect water from streams and ponds, and women who must work with other women to procure, by any means, the water by which one lives.

In the case of the municipality of Soyapango, the delivery of water by private operators, in tanker trucks and in bottles, has become essential, considering the gravity of the problems discussed previously (the low quality of the water and the large number of days during which there is no water running in the pipes). It is estimated that 42.6 percent of people receive water from other providers, spending on average $10 to $15 a month that is paid in addition to the bill for the piped water that does not arrives on many days and is of low quality. The ability to access water from providers other than ANDA depends mainly on the income level of the family; the bill from the public service provider (ANDA) eats up, on average, 7.9 percent of the family income. These problems are not unusual, and often what is being sought is the discrediting of the public provider in order to justify the entry of a private sector company.

Due to these problems, those women so entrusted with the responsibility of providing water to their families have learned an important organizing process that has the objective of empowering citizens in the exercise and defense of their rights. The population – led by women – has demanded, in the first place, that water services remain in the public sector and, secondly, that water service delivery provide quality potable water and that access, extension and tariffs are affordable relative to the economic situation in El Salvador.