Brazil’s poverty programme brings water to the destitute

FOR generations, the women of Guaribas, Brazil, would trudge more than two miles a day to a spring, wait hours in line, occasionally quarrel when the flow dropped to a trickle, and then head home balancing buckets of water on their heads for drinking, cooking and bathing.

That ended two years ago when a water tower went up on a hill overlooking this remote outpost in Brazil’s arid and destitute north-east.

Now the water flows from taps outside people’s homes, and the only line is the one that forms at the town’s cash machine, to withdraw 65 Brazilian reals (€23.80) per family for food, courtesy of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.