Points of View
Running water
Is rural water supply in disrepair? Has the trend in recent years from centrally managed water utilities to district and community management brought benefits to water users or greater problems? And how should the donor community, who initiate so many rural water projects, respond? Long term sustainability of rural water supply, necessary for agricultural development as well as human health, depends on sensible management and sensible financing arrangements.
The following points of view are taken from papers presented and interviews recorded at the 27th WEDC Conference "People and Systems for Water, Sanitation and Health", held 20 to 24 August in Lusaka, Zambia.
While there have been undoubted and widespread successes at the level of
individual communities, community management has failed to achieve its full
potential on two major counts. Firstly, there is a problem of long term sustainability.
Following 'hand over', communities are frequently left entirely on their own;
the assumption being that the capacity-building work undertaken during the
project period has left them with the necessary skills and institutions to
manage their systems indefinitely. However, there is increasing recognition
that community management institutions and rules are often as vulnerable as
the water supply technology itself.
The second failure of community management is in terms of coverage. Far too
often efforts to bring about community management remain ad-hoc and piecemeal,
carried out by international NGOs and donors on a 'project' basis that often
ignores or parallels government structures and policies. In addition, governments
lack the resources, the capacities or the political will to create a support
structure for communities left on their own after 'hand over'.
E.Bolt, T.Schouten and P.Moriarty, IRC, The Netherlands
It is a God-given right. It is a human right. But it costs somebody money
to bring it to your doorstep. And so in this respect we must also be responsible.
It's just like food, shelter, nobody talks about just giving houses for free.
Nobody talks about giving food for free. We must pay for all these things
because it costs money to have them into our doorstep. The same with water.
All these are basic human rights. Every country has got them enshrined in
their constitutions and they say that these are human rights. So everybody
must work out ways and means of providing this.
Dennis Mwanza, Director of the Water Utility Partnership
There are a number of obstacles facing private participation in Nigerian
water supply sector. The main sources of capital are likely to be foreigners
and most foreigners may be reluctant to invest. Political uncertainty is high
in Nigeria, and in traditional utilities the capital costs are high, the expected
lifetime of the investment is long, and returns will be in local rather than
foreign currency. Thus investment appears quite risky, and if foreign investors
are willing to invest, they may demand a high risk premium. Moreover, privatisation
most often leads to higher prices for basic services such as water.
Hence, to attract foreign investors on acceptable terms, government needs
to create a favourable climate for business by providing macroeconomic stability,
competitive taxes, freedom to repatriate capital, and all the aspects of governance
that affect willingness to invest-including contract enforcement, low corruption,
and adherence to transparent rules, including for privatisation.
Olatundun J.Adelegan and Joseph A.Adelegan, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
South Africa has got a very interesting situation. They have something enshrined
in their law or constitution that every South African is entitled to a 'free'
six cubic metres of water. That translates into 30 litres of water per day
for free. But it is actually not very free because it's either the government
has to provide the subsidy to a local authority or, within the system itself,
the local authority can put in cross-subsidy. So in other words, the people
who are at a much better advantage in terms of having access to slightly more
money pay for the people who are in the low income bracket. So even if on
the outside we say it's free, it's not actually free when you go into the
books.
Dennis Mwanza, Director of the Water Utility Partnership
Cost recovery has always been one of the most challenging aspects of implementing
sustainable rural water supply schemes. Recent policy changes in South Africa
regarding the funding of water service delivery have called into question
the approach to, and relevance of, cost recovery. In the light of recent developments,
the questions, 'Why recover costs?' 'How to recover costs?' and, 'Is cost
recovery worth the cost?' have never been more relevant.
Andrew Macdonall, South Africa
Water, which used to be a free commodity, is now demanding some financial
commitments from almost all inhabitants. In fact some people had to be dragged
to the law courts on these financial matters. In all these, the committee
relies tremendously on the authority of both the traditional leadership and
the modern ones. The Water and Sanitation committee is also supposed to do
periodical elections of new members but this rarely happens because of its
voluntary nature, which does not make it attractive to vie for.
Edem Asimah and John Hedjoh, Ghana
Purely in management terms, making the Rural District Council the management
unit allows decision making to be done in a timely fashion and delays to be
minimized. Local ownership and vision of the project promoting commitment
helps to ensure that the best use is made of limited resources. Flexibility
of approach is possible as the evaluation of progress is ongoing and this
can be fed back into decision making. In terms of good governance, Rural District
Councils are the representative bodies of local government at district level.
As such they can be more relevant, sympathetic and responsive to their local
communities than distant central government.
Brian Mathew, Zimbabwe
In Ghana we are trying to get the community members and the district assemblies
to take over responsibility from the national government. However, we have
met a lot of problems. Problems of capacity, problems of logistics, financial
problems, where the communities have to pay 5% and then the district assembly
is to pay 5%. They have got beautiful plans. They are willing to give water
to their community members and yet the money is not there. How can they operate?
My plea is let us not attach the district assembly. Let's not make them responsible
for any financial contribution because they can't. And they will pull us down.
They will pull the agency down. They will pull community members down because
they cannot give them what they need.
Fati Mumuni, Ghana Water and Sanitation Agency
The challenge is to develop a programme that takes account of local conditions,
allows the poor to participate and choose between different systems but does
not create unrealistic situations that set the poor up to fail.
Edward D.Breslin, WaterAid, Mozambique
The participatory planning process has raised expectations among communities,
which the district has not been sufficiently able to respond to.
Kevin Kelly and Lawrence Muludyang, Embassy of Ireland, Zambia
With increased pressures from civic organisations, the water utility extended
community-managed standpipes. Because of the difficulty experienced in the
day-to-day management of the water points, as well as cost recovery, most
of the communal standpipes were disconnected due to non-payment. As a solution
to this problem, Durban Metro Water Service (South Africa), went into partnership
with local agents, locally known as water bailiffs, to manage water kiosks
in the informal settlements. The community members were involved in the selection
of the water bailiffs, who were required to pay security deposits to the utility.
The unit price of the water was agreed upon between the operator and the utility,
and was displayed at the kiosk.
Sam Kayaga and Dr. Richard Franceys, Uganda
One common misconception surrounding the pricing and billing for water is
that it can be treated as any other economic good. The economic laws of supply
and demand do not apply for water as they do for other commodities. Firstly
almost every rural community has an alternative source of free water, to that
offered by the water scheme. It may be that this alternative source is distant,
of poor quality and limited; but it must exist or else the community would
not be viable in the first place. Secondly access to water is not a luxury,
but seen as a right both by the majority of the community and (somewhat controversially)
the South African Constitution.
The application of a uniform tariff is inherently unfair in that it favours
those who consume most.
Andrew Macdonall, South Africa
We suggest that probably the next logical step in development of rural water
supply in Africa, could be an integrated approach of managing operation and
maintenance of small piped water systems (SPWS) together with the village
hand pumps in the communities around these towns. The SPWS can offer communities
a maintenance contract for existing hand pumps and a lease contract with a
new hand pump to replace an old broken-down hand pump, including regeneration
of the borehole. The hand pump itself remains property of the SPWS in a public-private
ownership, while the community will pay between 1 and 5 US$ per year per family
to the SPWS for its maintenance.
Paul Van Beers, Rural Water Systems, The Netherlands
The main hurdle to overcome is community confidence in the management of
funds. It is normal for there to be no trust that someone won't run off with
the money.
Steven Sugden, WaterAid, Malawi
The District Assemblies role is to pay 5% of capital cost contribution for
community sub-projects, select communities that will benefit and contract
the private sector to provide the goods and services for the implementation
of the programme.
However, it is common knowledge that the District Assembly has not a wide
revenue network (revenue collection in Ghana is poor with revenue collectors
conniving and cheating). The District Assembly therefore relies on the central
government for the Common Fund which is to be paid quarterly. The Common Fund
is never paid on time thus rendering efforts at development futile. Community
members can mobilize their 5% capital cost contribution but the District Assemblies'
inability to contribute this amount will frustrate the programme.
Fati Mumuni, Community Water and Sanitation Agency, Ghana
We still had field workers visiting various groups in the community and
addressing them on the issues of cost recovery and the need thereof. But it
did not end up there. It also ended up by bringing the municipality, if I
can put it this way, closer to the people in terms of payment. Like if you
take pension days, the person collecting revenue from the municipality instead
of staying in the office and expecting people to move up to the office he
would get down to the place where the pension is paid out and as a result
the person, immediately after receiving their pension, they would just get
to their table where the revenue is being collected and they would pay. However,
you have to take the cultural considerations into account. For example there
are those who feel restrained by cultural practices that immediately they
get their money they won't just pay there and then they have got to take it
home and put it at a certain spot for the ancestors to bless it. And then
the following day they go and pay. They didn't default.
Johnson Nghatsane, Development Focus, South Africa
Before any cost recovery strategy is formulated for a particular scheme,
there must be clarity on the objective. Is the primary aim to recover costs,
to increase accountability or to manage water resources? If the aim is to
recover costs, then a thorough cost-benefit analysis is essential to assess
whether the initiative makes financial sense. Efficient cost recovery is not
cheap, and may not be worth the expense.
Andrew Macdonall, South Africa
With regard to community empowerment - are we aware of the insensitivity
of much of our projects? Can we listen and learn?
W.K.Kennedy, UK
| WEDC |
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| Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), a self-funding organization within the Department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Further information is available at: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/wedc/conferences/ or contact Email: wedc.conf@lboro.ac.uk |
