Migrant communities at Thai-Myanmar border tap filters for safe drinking water

Water scarcity and contamination among challenges faced by Mae Sot’s migrants

- Sara Bapat and Clemens Choy

For Mr Saw T, 21, and Htoo L, 14, part of their usual schedules as students at the Thoo Mweh Khee Migrant Learning Centre at the Thailand-Myanmar border involves a daily visit to a brown water tank almost double their height.

There, they spend about 20 minutes cleaning the tank's filters and flushing away the debris that has built up. Every month, the pair carry out a deeper clean, pouring a spoonful of chlorine powder into a small valve and letting the solution run through the entire filter system.

The tank stores water drawn from the city pipeline. Up to 10,000 litres of water is filtered a day, and is used to meet the drinking and cooking needs of more than 3,200 students and teachers.

The work by the two students, whose real names are withheld for privacy and safety concerns, is part of the community development arm of the learning centre they are studying at.

But these efforts are not merely for exposure — they are critical to ensure the students and teachers can get access to safe drinking water.

The Thoo Mweh Khee centre is one of the largest along the border, serving around 3,200 students daily from nursery through high school.

Such centres are largely set up and run by refugees and migrants, but they operate under the Thai government. A 2024 media report estimated that there are about 60 learning centres in the area.

Ms Gawa (not her real name), a 21-year-old student at the centre, said: “Sometimes we would go to the teacher’s office or neighbours’ houses just to ask for water.”

Bottled water is too expensive, and when the thirst became unbearable, students would squat behind the dorm at the government-supplied pipeline, pressing their bottles to the thin stream.

“Sometimes we would get sore throats, feel dizzy, or even have diarrhoea. Health workers warned us that there may be a virus in the water if we drink it without boiling,” Ms Gawa recalled.