DHAKA (UCAN) -- Every morning at sunrise a line of tribal women used to trudge up the hill above Thandajhiripara in the Chittagong Hill Tracts with water containers on their heads.

Mij Khai Sapru Marma was one of them. The 58-year-old mother claims she used to walk a long way up the hill to a jhiri, or spring, and wait with the other women for what seemed like ages to get the often muddy water.

Now thanks to Caritas Bangladesh, funding from Misereor in Germany and Cordaid in the Netherlands, and the advice of a local NGO, Green Hill, that morning women's chore is a thing of the past. Caritas is the social arm of the Catholic Church.

Now they have a tap that brings purified water from the jhiri to their village.

Sapru is one of the 172 villagers Caritas counts as beneficiaries of the project, which employs a "gravity flow system" using plastic pipes and filters to tap a natural spring and supply clean water.

The system, which has four taps in the village, was officially inaugurated on June 23 in Bandarban district, 390 kilometers southeast of Dhaka, almost a day's drive from the capital.

According to Caritas, village leader Prusaong Marma Karbari claimed during the inauguration in his village that those who installed this safe water system "are like God."

Previously, due to lack of safe water, villagers fell ill and died due to waterborne illnesses including diarrhea and typhoid.

"From now on nobody will suffer or die due to unsafe water," he claimed, noting that Caritas had offered advice to villagers on the importance of a clean water supply and the dangers of waterborne diseases.

Sapru told the Caritas representative her family is now safe and free from the fear of these life-threatening illnesses. "Caritas not only arranged the fresh water for us but is giving us life." Her son, his wife and their two small sons live with Sapru and her husband.

Every year people used to suffer from illness and the villagers thought "invisible" forces caused the deaths, but later they found out dirty water might be the culprit, she said.

During the dry season, the women used to compete to reach the jhiri, which often turned into a small, muddy ditch. According to Sapru, "Those who failed to collect water first had to wait for several hours."

Speaking to UCA News in Dhaka, Caritas executive director Benedict Alo D'Rozario said that a few years back he saw a gravity-based water system on a trip to Nepal and it inspired him. He wanted to set up a similar project in a "very inaccessible village" in the hill tracts. He said Green Hill offered assistance as they were the first to introduce such systems in the area.

He said the Thandajhiripara system consists of plastic pipes that bring the spring water down to the village, running it through a box-like filter system and channeling it to the four taps.

James Gomes, director of Caritas Bangladesh's Chittagong Region told UCA News there are other jhiri in the hill tracts, but they wanted to find one that had water flowing all year round.

Caritas also runs health-care, education, tree-planting and income-generating programs for tribal people living in the remote villages in the hills.

D'Rozario said the new water system might face a few difficulties. "Long-term drought may cause low water flow," he said, while monsoon landslides could damage the pipes.

The Caritas executive director said more gravity flow systems are planned for two other remote Bandarban villages using donor funding.

Karbari said their village was so remote that no organization except Caritas bothered to help.

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