Petaia Mafuiele

08 Nov Petaia Mafuiele

Petaia Mafulele is currently working as the Operation and Maintenance Manager for the Rural Division – Samoa Water Authroigyt. Petaia is 36 years old and has been working for the Authority for almost 5 years now. He is currently in his second three years contractual term after his reappointment in July 2018. Petaia graduated from the University of Canterbury New Zealand with a Bachelor Degree with Honors majoring in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Prior to joingin the SWA in 2014, he worked as a graduate Engineer at the Electic Power Corporation Samoa in the Power Generation Division. Petaia has expereiences in the fileds of Teleconmmunication, Electrical and Celectronics but has been working full time with the Water Authroity. He is responsible for overlooking the water supppoly from the water source to water treatment facilities and down to the customer end point. His team is currenlty responsible for the Operation and Mintenance of one Slow Sand Filter Plant, five Rapid Sand Filter Plants and eighteen boreholes with an estimate totatl number of 9406 Domestic and 300 Commerical registered customers.

Ecological Purification System in Samoa

Ecological Purification Systems (EPS) is commonly used by the Water Authority in Samoa for water treatment. Water is naturally purified through use of micro-organism established on the sand filter after heavy settable solids were removed at the settling and roughing pre-treatment filters. The system has many advantages from the viewpoint of cost, energy, chemicals and environment; however, it is prone to high turbidity but can be managed by adding appropriate size sedimentation tanks and roughing filters. The Samoa Water Authority continues to invest in EPS systems by implementing small scale EPS in isolated rural communities.