Siayan municipality in the Province of Zamboanga del Norte has been declared by then National Statistics Coordination Board (NSCB) as the poorest municipality in the country. Access to safe drinking water is one of the major development concerns of the government.
In its effort to make local technology work for the people and to provide practical solutions to pressing issues, the Department of Science and Technology-IX, through the Provincial Science and Technology Center (PSTC) in Zamboanga del Norte, distributed some 50 units of DOST’s Ceramic Water Filter to selected Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries who have limited or no access to potable water.
The DOST water purification system (WPS) is a simple technology that consists of a container and filtering medium, which is the ceramic pot filter (CPF). The ceramic filter is made up of red clay which is coated with nano-colloidal silver as the anti-microbial agent that replaces the chlorination process in traditional water filter systems. The ceramic pot typically sits or hangs on the top of a large plastic container, which is fitted with a tap at the bottom. A lid is placed on top of the filter to prevent contamination. The system is capable to purify tap water, deep well water, and raw water tainted with up to 3 % suspended particles or silt and convert these into safe drinking water. According to the Industrial Technology Development Institute(ITDI) of the DOST, the water filter has passed the Philippine National Standards (PNS) for drinking water in terms of microbiological and chemical analysis.
DOST IX Regional Director Brenda L. Nazareth-Manzano said that the grant of water filter to the community is one of the initiatives of the Department under the project entitled “Community Empowerment thru Science and Technology (CEST)”. Water and sanitation is just one component of CEST for the target communities in the region. The others are livelihood and economic enterprise development, health and nutrition, education and literacy, and disaster risk reduction and mitigation. (DOST IX PRESS RELEASE)
