E-conference report on town water supply and sanitation E-conference

The electronic conference on ‘Town Water Supply and Sanitation’ was organized by WEDC on behalf of the World Bank’s ‘Town Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative’ (TWSSI), with funding from the Bank-Netherlands Water Partnership (BNWP). Under Phase One of the TWSSI a draft report has been prepared, Town Water Supply and Sanitation. This report is a first attempt to set out a strategy for town water supply and sanitation, and the objective of this e-conference is to help review and comment on the findings of selected chapters, identify any remaining gaps in knowledge, discuss the tools needed for implementation, and reach consensus on the basic messages presented in the report. Although Phase One of the TWSSI has considered towns of up to 200,000 population, it has generally been found that it is towns in the 2,000 to 50,000 population range that fall within a "management gap", and are the prime focus of the report

Developing competences for water utility change programmes

African and Asian urban water sector organisations recognise the need to support performance improvement and organisational change programmes to meet the growing demands for improved services in challenging environments. Yet many such programmes have not resulted in the desired service improvements. This paper looks at three successful water utilities in Africa and Southern Asia to identify the factors that are contributing to substantial service delivery improvement. This analysis is used to inform the competencies required of senior managers and engineers responsible for water utility change programmes. How to develop the necessary competences through targeted management development programmes is considered by reviewing selected urban water sector management development programmes in India and Africa. Increasingly engineers working in the developing world are expected to focus on effective service management in challenging environments, and develop appropriate competences

Strategic marketing of water services in developing countries

The recent (2000) global water supply and sanitation assessment by the World Health Organisation found that over one billion people do not have access to improved water supply. The finding points to the challenges faced by municipal engineers and other professionals responsible for the provision of water services in developing countries. Population growth and the increasing poverty, particularly in the urban areas, compound the challenge. A key objective for water utilities is to provide services to the growing population, including the poor, in a financially sustainable manner. Strategic marketing offers an innovative method of meeting this objective. Research aimed at adapting and developing a marketing approach for use in the water sector was carried out in a number of developing countries between 1999 and 2001, with detailed field research in Kenya, Uganda and India. This paper discusses strategic marketing of urban water services and provides a methodology that water utilities could use to structure their service delivery options to customers while meeting their financial objectives. The paper outlines how utilities could structure service delivery with appropriate pricing and serve more excluded customers (including the poor) at affordable cost and achieve financial sustainability. The paper concludes that strategic marketing of water services has potential to improve services to existing and excluded (potential) customers while improving the utility's revenue base

Managing watsan services in small towns

A SIGNIFICANT PROPORTION of people in developing countries live in small towns. Small towns often require more elaborate forms of water supply systems than villages, such as pipe networks. In addition, as villages are growing into rural growth centres and small towns, the transition of appropriate management of watsan and the institutional set up proves difficult, consequently many of the small towns have relatively low levels of water and sanitation services. Until recently, small towns have been largely ignored in terms of new investments in water supply and sanitation. Where investment has been made, deterioration of services occurs soon after commissioning, possibly because proper arrangements were not made for operations and maintenance of the systems, or because inappropriate management options were adopted. Low levels of water and sanitation services contribute to the poor economic growth in many small towns, thus hindering poverty reduction efforts in developing countries

Utility and non-state water service provision for the urban poor

Inadequate water service provision to the urban poor remains a serious problem in low-income countries. Utilities lack the resources, obligations or incentives for service expansion and there may be a long delay before water utilities are in a position to extend services. Non-state water providers, including both formal and informal local private providers, as well as civil society institutions, play a large role in provision of services to the urban poor and are increasingly recognised as a potential effective means of service provision to the urban poor. Governments should seek to create a better enabling environment for utilities both to overcome disincentives in service provision to the poor and to seek more effective ways of engagement with the non-state providers

Paying for water services: effects of household characteristics

Maximising cost recovery is currently a top priority for managers of urban water utilities in low-income countries. This research was carried out in 11 major towns of Uganda to establish which household characteristics influence payment for water services. A questionnaire was used to collect data on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and several socio-economic variables. Using regression techniques, it was established that the following attributes of the household head moderated the satisfaction and loyalty relationship: gender, occupation and level of education. Other significant factors were household income and property tenure status. These results could be used to make water utilities customer-focused

International water targets and national realities in Sub-Saharan Africa: the case of Uganda

© 2017 Academy of Social Sciences This article considers how to reconcile ambitious UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for universal piped water supplies with developing country realities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A concise process for effective reviews of medium-term national targets is proposed and is applied in an analysis of the current provision of piped water to households and shared community facilities in urban and rural settings in Uganda. Different disciplinary perspectives are adopted to review trends, the performance of key stakeholders and their scope for achieving new targets. Only about 5% of households have piped water supplies on their premises in rural areas in SSA. To achieve the SDG target of 100% coverage will, therefore, take a long time and requires continued support for the sustainability of community water facilities as a priority. The SDGs offer sensible long-term aims, but national medium-term target setting and reviewing remain critical and require realistic and systematic planning approaches, as well as careful global reporting of national performance against SDG targets. The authors argue that balanced incentives are needed to encourage stakeholders to strive for realistic targets in the medium term, without demotivating countries with limited capacities and resources

Bill payment behaviour in urban water services: empirical data from Uganda

Previous research has shown that, despite the low-income levels in developing countries, cost recovery is a prerequisite for sustainability of urban water services. The challenge for service improvement is continually growing, as it is projected that 88% of the increase in global population will live in urban centres of low-income countries by the year 2015. Yet bill collection efficiency in some African urban water utilities is lower than 50%. In order to improve cost recovery levels, the new public managerialism paradigm suggests that water utility managers need to change their business philosophy from being supply-driven to engendering customer focus. This study used empirical data, obtained through a cross-sectional survey in 11 major towns in Uganda to establish customer perceptions that influence bill payment behaviour of water utility customers. Regression analysis of data obtained showed that service value and customer satisfaction contribute about 20% of the variation in customer loyalty, which in turn significantly influences bill payment behaviour. Therefore, in order to improve cost recovery, utility managers have to work towards improving customer satisfaction and perceived value of the services delivered. The effect of corporate image, of significance in high-income countries, was not found to be relevant in Uganda

Selection and use determinants of shared toilet facilities in Ashaiman, Ghana

In low income urban areas where a majority of houses do not have toilets, shared toilets are often seen as the last alternative to open defecation or flying toilets; and today, more than half of the urban Ghanaians rely on them. Several book chapters and papers examine the characteristics of the shared toilets from their political management to their technical design, but very little is said about how urban Ghanaians are selecting and using the few public or private shared toilets available in their neighbourhood. This paper analyses what determines the appropriate toilet for different categories of population in the large town of Ashaiman. It concludes that those determinants and the uses of toilets vary from one neighbourhood to another, from one family to another and may vary at individual level from day to day. Those variations answer with pragmatism the dilemma "price" or "cleanliness" that urban dwellers face when looking daily for a toilet

Emerging categories of urban shared sanitation

With 2.6 billion people without access to improved sanitation facilities and with a growing urban population globally, shared sanitation in the form of public or community latrines is a pragmatic way of increasing coverage, but it is currently not deemed 'improved'. This paper explores the variety of facilities that currently exist in order to identify what would enable some of these latrines to be classed as acceptable and to ensure that future shared sanitation facilities meet minimum standards. The categories mostly relate to issues of ownership, management, location and finance rather than technological considerations. An extensive literature review reveals that the users' perspective of acceptability is largely absent from current discussions