About 67% of Uganda's rural population relies on hand pumps for water supply, with over 63,000 in use. Handpumps will continue to do so despite policy shifts toward piped systems.
The standardised pumps (U2, U3, U3M) have relied upon the same specifications since the 1990s, but it is well known that rapid corrosion of submerged components affects performance and lifespan, driven by aggressive groundwater (low pH, high salinity, high chloride concentrations). The Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) suspended the use of Galvanised Iron (GI) in 2016, but the standards, held by the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), haven't been revised since 1995 to address evolving technical, environmental, and climatic challenges - in particular, rapid handpump corrosion and available solutions.
A pragmatic, out-of-the-box thinker and leading authority on the design, manufacture, and maintenance of handpumps in low-income countries, Erich was a forceful advocate for the community ownership and management of small-scale water schemes and an indefatigable trainer of government engineers and village-level operatives.
Erich was born and grew up in Switzerland. After graduating as a mechanical engineer, he began his career designing tractors, but the 1970s were a bad time for the industry and many factories, including his, closed. So, in 1979, he moved to Bangladesh where he began work at the Mirpur Agricultural Workshop and Training School (MAWTS) where his focus moved from tractors to expanding the manufacturing capacity of factories to produce and sell the simple rower-pump, which was ideal for low-cost irrigation. It was through this that he met Ken Gibbs (UNICEF) and Tim Journey (World Bank) who were working on improvements to direct-action handpumps for domestic water supply.
In 1984, Erich turned down a job at the World Bank to return to Switzerland and join SKAT, which was then an association affiliated with the University of St. Gallen. He rose to become Managing Director and navigated the organisation through the tricky transition of becoming an independent consulting company, SKAT Consulting Ltd, in 1997 and establishing Skat Foundation in 2002, before handing over the reins to Jürg Christen. His attention to detail and quality was applied to getting ISO 9000 accreditation in quality management within the organisation.
