they impinge on the quality of the water supplied and increase the wear of the infrastructure this coupled with persistently high levels of pipebreaks throughout the region allows for crosscontamination between water supply and sanitation pipes with significant consequences for public health as discussed in a later subsection this suggests that the slight improvement in continuity of supply is not linked to improved infrastructure but rather to the fact that utilities are under less financial pressure to interrupt water supplies in order to save costs eg by reduced electricity consumption of water pumps the interruptions in supply are therefore increasingly likely to be due to technical factors such as pipe breaks and sewerage blockages than to cost saving measures