Our Director of International Business Development, Barbara Brezger has just completed her latest quarterly visit to Papua New Guinea which included attending the WASH Symposium. As ever, Barbara was keen to meet with our partners in Papua New Guinea, like Ms Hellen Naidy from the East Cape Village Project in Milne Bay. She also had the privilege of meeting with locals facing water issues such as the high cost of water carting for households and communities due to a lack of ready access to clean water.
While in PNG, Barbara met with representatives of Express Freight Management (EFM) and Don Bosco schools who are awaiting the imminent arrival of their new Moerk Water treatment systems. EFM are gaining two Moerk Water groundwater treatment systems – one for desalination and a separate system for disinfection. Don Bosco schools are receiving 2 membrane filtration units. These units are part of a training curriculum Moerk Water will be delivering in 2025.
Wash Symposium
Also during Barbara’s visit to Port Moresby, she attended the PNG WASH Symposium 2024. This was organised by the WaSH Programme Management Unit (PMU) under the PNG Department of National Planning and Monitoring (DNPM). This 2-day conference, held at APEC Haus in Port Moresby ran from the 16th to 17th October. It explored the theme “Resilient and Sustainable WaSH in PNG through Collective Action”
Across the two days Barbara met with representatives from World Vision, WaterAid, Live and Learn, DFAT and Plan International. One of Barbara’s highlights was having a chat with Mr Takale Tuna, National WaSH Program Coordinator PNG. Other highlights were listening to Warren Lamur’s presentation (Kramer Ausenco) and learning about Sago Network’s sanitation solutions. Furthermore, Turea Wickham’s (World Vision PNG) excellent moderation of the abstract presentation was also noteworthy. A big congratulations to Turea and Edmond Bannick from PMU for their amazing work delivering such a successful symposium.
YWAM Demonstration
Barbara rounded off her trip with a visit to Youth With a Mission’s (YWAM) Gabutu campus. Here, YWAM held a demonstration of a solar powered Moerk Water community seawater desalination unit. Attendees were impressed by the compact size of the unit given the capacity of treated water it produced. Matt Scott, ship development manager for YWAM, will install the unit at the campus during the dry season. The unit will provide free drinking water to locals who are currently without a consistent source of drinking water.
Moerk Water continues to believe that combining German Engineering with Australian manufacturing expertise and local PNG maintenance leads to long term success. Robust, sustainable and locally managed solutions are the only way to achieve long term success for water projects. Moerk Water looks forward to delivering more safe drinking water projects in PNG in the future.
To find out more about Moerk Water’s work in Papua New Guinea, visit our projects page.
