By Vincent Gunde

Beyond Water, an organization implementing water interventions in Dowa district in TA Chakhadza and TA Kayembe, says it will cease provision of it’s repair and maintenance operations in TA Chakhadza and TA Dowa in Dowa Distict effective 31st March 2026. This is worrisome as rural water supply is facing numerous challenges in the district resulting to low functionality rates due to unaccountable service arrangements and high costs of rehabilitation for donors.

Beyond Water’s mission was to address these fundamental problems by increasing functionality of water points with reliable spare parts supply chains, improving accountability through the use of timely and accurate data collection and delivering financial viability through increasing water user revenue.

Beyond Water’s Managing Director Phillip Chidawati, said his organization service offer includes repairs within 72 hours, quarterly services, and rehabilitations.

Chidawati said his organization offers premium contracts for communities at K195,000, Premium contracts for institutions at K245,000 and basic contracts for communities at K120,000 saying the organization has achieved financial viability by reducing costs through scale, charging fair and affordable user fees and increasing income from non- traditional sources.

He said among the achievements registered by the organization include water point committee customers from 17 in 2022/23 to 302 in 2025/26 financial year, revenue generation from K975,000 to K19,595,944.00 and average water point functionality rate from 71 percent to 99 percent.

The Director said the key challenges and barriers faced by the organization are funding environment observing that donors are not willing to fund the subsidy gap, high costs of rehabilitation, lack of national and local regulations and lack of clarity on policy and regulator responsibilities saying significant capital investment is focusing on urban water supply.

“We are therefore unable to continue providing guaranteed repair and maintenance services to the communities at the current scale,” said Chidawati.

He said Beyond Water has plans that by 31st March, 2026 it ceases operation and maintenance across its current areas of operation within the district in the areas of T/A Chakhaza and Kayembe, hold cluster meetings with all Beyond Water customers to inform them of the decision and offer full refunds on all tariffs paid for their current contract, among others.

Chidawati said Beyond Water will conduct follow- up assessment in partnership with district Water Development Officer to evaluate the impact of removal of services from the district, supporting ongoing evidence gathering for WASH Systems for Health programme, among others.

In her remarks, Dowa District Council’s Water Development Officer Fanny Muula, thanked Beyond Water for the good job it has done to the Dowa communities in ensuring that they are provided with safe and portable water as well as making sure that water points in the district are fully managed.

Muula expressed hope that Self Help Africa (SHA) will take over what Beyond Water was doing in the district appealing to all partners implementing water interventions to work together in addressing water challenges observing that some big communities are still being served by one borehole.