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Evaluation of VERC's Rural Safe Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation Project, supported by WaterAid Bangladesh 4th February - 1st March 1998
The following summarises an evaluation carried out by independent consultants in By Eric Abitbol
Evaluations Methodology The evaluation aimed to provide a broad understanding of the present situation and assess the programme's impact from the perception of end users in rural areas. It aimed also to draw lessons for future programme interventions. Ninety percent of the evaluation study was centred on VERC's role in implementing the projects in Bangladesh. Recommendations included in the evaluation aim largely to guide improvements of VERC's operations. WaterAid's role in influencing the overall situation has also been discussed, with a few recommendations provided. Before launching the participatory evaluation, a three-day training workshop was organised at the VERC training centre at Savar to develop the participatory methodology. This methodology was field tested with nearby villages and then fine-tuned through a process of experience sharing. After thorough discussions, two groups were formed, each of which would focus on specific issues for the village-based studies. The evaluation team met with representatives of organisations working in the water sector including UNICEF, the World Bank, DANIDA, NGO Forum and various other NGOs and INGOs to gather first hand information from which to develop a sectoral overview. Several surveys were conducted to look at the engineering aspects of the project. Technology monitoring reports and other relevant literature regarding the hydrogeology and lithology of Bangladesh were collected and studied. Field visit observations and face to face discussions with the beneficiaries and others related directly and indirectly with the programme were carried out simultaneously. Attempts were made to shift from verbal to visual modes of analysis as far as possible to involve the weak, poor and marginalised of villages. While the evaluation process has been far-reaching, its methodology had a number of limitations as well. Evaluation time was short and team members were overwhelmed with the extensive information generated by villagers, even though only a sample of villages were involved in the participatory evaluation. While all efforts were made to ensure spontaneous participation of all villagers, in some villages influential group members of tubewells attempted to dominate proceedings. Diverse challenges arose also for the evaluators stemming from gender issues in Bangladesh. Process and Progress Efforts continue to be made by Government and non-governmental organisations to ensure safe drinking water supplies and sanitation facilities for everyone. In 1997, the Government drafted a National Drinking Water Supply Strategy and Sanitation Policy. It aims to generate the full participation of user-beneficiaries through community-based, and other stakeholder organisations, in planning, development and maintenance. WaterAid has been extending its support to address issues of water and sanitation in four areas of Bangladesh, namely Rajshahi, Naogaon, Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. Assistance has been provided through a local NGO, Village Education Resource Centre (VERC) since 1986. There have been two phases to WaterAid involvement in the current project: Phase I (1993-96) and Phase II (1996-99). WaterAid's recent country strategy stresses extending the facilities of drinking water and sanitation to difficult areas, including coastal saline areas, low water table areas and areas inhabited by indigenous peoples and minority groups. Emphasis is also given towards developing successful models for implementing water, sanitation and hygiene education projects and improving current approaches for eliciting women's participation. Of three major projects currently funded by WaterAid, VERC Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (Phase-II) is the single largest. It has had a generally valuable and progressive impact on the lives of beneficiaries, though with regional considerations. While the overall impact was very good in Rajshahi area, it was not as good in Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. Also, engineering and material inputs were better delivered in comparison to the inputs for hygiene education, people's participation and village institution building. Improvements were generally reported in villagers' quality of life, personal hygiene, household hygiene and hygiene of immediate surroundings. Significant reductions in workload, labour and time related to fetching water have resulted and now that water is accessible at any time of day, a related increase in quantity of water collected has been noted. Nearly 100% of participating villagers drink tubewell water when it is available, though pond water is still used for many domestic purposes. Villagers who live within a reasonable distance from tubewells experience most of the benefits. Other positive impacts of the project include the better storage of food, an increase in knowledge about disease and good hygiene practices, combined with an increased demand for health services. Latrine use has risen and shoes are increasingly being worn when visiting the latrine. Many villagers have reported smoking less as a direct result of hygiene education. More children are now reading, resulting from higher attendance at school due to fewer incidences of illness from water borne diseases. Beneficiaries also report that personal hygiene, especially washing, sometimes takes up much valuable time needed for working, a sometimes costly effect in rural communities. It has also been reported that conflict sometimes occurs between beneficiaries when many people want to use tubewell water simultaneously. When queues are long at water points, beneficiaries sometimes revert to using lesser quality water sources. Water and Technology During Phase I, a total of 320 tubewells with No.6 hand pumps were to be installed. For Phase II, a total of 96 tubewells have been planned. In the case of some villages, hard ground conditions prevented the installation of tubewells. In a limited number of other sites, tubewells were ineffective due to saline water discharge. Large scale and increasing coverage of deep tubewells for irrigation in Rajshahi area is directly affecting the availability of water in the shallow drinking water tubewells. In the lean season, the availability of water in ponds and shallow tubewells drops to virtually zero and dependence on Tara tubewells for drinking water becomes established. Excessive use of ground water for high water demand crops and seasonal dependence on tubewell sources for drinking water might create unbearable pressures on the installed tubewells and may give rise to sudden unforeseen problems. Problems associated with this dependence on a limited number of tubewells are compounded by the current threat of arsenic poisoning in most parts of Bangladesh and an increased proliferation of arsenic into the existing safe ground water sources. Arsenic is an odourless and tasteless substance, highly toxic in nature. WaterAid has taken adequate care during installation of new Tara II hand pumps in regions well-known for being affected by arsenic. Testing using Arsenic Water Field Test kits supplied by UNICEF has effectively been undertaken. The World Bank is currently maintaining an Arsenic Mitigation Project which is expected to cover all arsenic affected villages. Generally speaking, water treatment technologies for removing arsenic from drinking water work well at a Water Works Level but are not reliable at a Household level. The cost per capita of the gravity systems depends on the pipe length and availability of materials in the local market. Though gravity flow schemes are costly in the immediate period, they may prove economical in the long run. Experience in gravity flow systems would be beneficial for VERC and WaterAid to replicate in any future work in the Chittagong Hill Tracks as these schemes are more reliable and provide better service in terms of availability and quantity of water than hand dug wells. VERC is currently subsidising the installation of pumps to the order of about 80%. Different organisations working in this sector believe that the subsidy on the tubewell component should be reduced gradually while assuring that poor people being targeted are not left out because of their inability to contribute. Several other challenges to the consistency of VERC/WaterAid efforts should be noted. Participatory tools were not used to take a general consensus of the villagers in siting the tubewells. Of 8 tubewells targeted in the first year for nine villages in two Unions of Sitakunda, 6 have been installed in one village alone and two in another two villages. All other villages received nothing. Compelled by technological problems, interventions were concentrated in one village in a highly biased manner in order to meet set targets. Recommendations
Sanitation The superstructure of almost all latrines are of a temporary nature except for some of the offset pit latrines. This is due to the fact that every year or so the pits need to be emptied, a process which requires the dismantling of the superstructure. However, the temporary superstructures without roofs make the latrines difficult to use when it rains. Users have also complained that the foul smell coming from the pan hole is one of the problems with this model, a problem easily overcome by making the superstructure off-set from the pit. VERC assumes 60% of the unit costs of latrines while beneficiaries are expected to cover the difference. Despite the high rate of subsidy, the poorest people do not necessarily benefit and many still cannot afford to pay and do not benefit from the system. Well-off sectors of the community tend to benefit from the subsidies, resulting from the target-driven policy of VERC and WaterAid. Recommendations
Implementers of the hygiene education component include VERC Health Motivators (salaried staff), as well as school teachers and Imams (volunteers). Hygiene activities currently consists of Health Motivators giving hygiene education in Phase II project villages. Health Motivators have demonstrated a high degree of commitment, holding numerous meetings and reaching many people, although their approach is essentially a traditional one using a didactic method. While Health Motivators have been an important component of the project, many are currently men, resulting in part from difficulties experienced by the project in recruiting women. Due to problems of mobility and the large area covered by Health Motivators, interventions have sometimes been thinly-spread or concentrated in spots. Imams and school teachers have been trained to promote hygiene education within their communities on an informal basis. Imams deliver sessions on the importance of personal hygiene and health related-problems after prayers. Their participation gives credibility to the project in many villages where people are deeply religious though Imams have more limited access to women beneficiaries. School teachers selected by VERC are from both government and non-government schools. VERC anticipates that they will hold one hygiene education session of 45 minutes per week on diverse aspects of hygiene education. Hygiene education materials currently used by Health Motivators are not designed to maximise the participation of beneficiaries. These include a set of 3 flip charts produced by the Department of Public Engineering jointly with UNICEF, and a video produced by VERC. The evaluation team visited a number of other organisations undertaking similar work and determined that there are a limited number of participatory materials available for hygiene education which may be suitable to adapt and use by VERC. Phase I villages are no longer participating in hygiene education with VERC staff. A baseline survey undertaken at the beginning of Phase II sought to identify beliefs of beneficiaries on the causation of diseases and traditional health practices undertaken. Information gathering suffered from cultural constraints, as most information gatherers were men while the programme is largely directed at women. There is no evidence that this information has been used when planning hygiene education interventions. Current hygiene education monitoring efforts have recorded the amount of hygiene education given rather than any change in behaviour of beneficiaries. The monitoring system comprises of monthly reports recording the quantity of hygiene education sessions given at courtyard meetings, school campaigns organised, films screened and the number of attending participants. Reports produced by project staff in different regions are sent to VERC headquarters in Dhaka where they are analysed at the central level. Results are then disseminated to project offices. Monitoring is also done by Health Monitors chatting informally with Imams and schoolteachers, though on a regular basis. There is currently no evidence of structured community-based monitoring aimed at promoting the full participation of beneficiaries. Recommendations
Visits and conferences of the Project Co-ordinator have included: 4 months training at Water Engineering Development Centre (WEDC-UK / 1991); two conferences organised by WEDC in Nepal (1992) and Sri Lanka (1994); experience gathering in Nepal on the use of keyhole latrines (mid-1994); a Strategic Planning Workshop in Nepal (1995) with Assistant Project Co-ordinator; and a strategic planning workshop in India (1997). In 1995, the Assistant Project Co-ordinator went to India for an exposure visit to Water and Sanitation Projects in Bangalore slums funded by WaterAid. In 1996, the Assistant Project Engineer was sent to NEWAH-Nepal for training on Gravity flow schemes. In December 1997, the first training workshop on the use of participatory approaches was organised which provided training for all the staff, including the Project Co-ordinator, Assistant Project Co-ordinators and Health Motivators. This was the first major input for strengthening staff capacity towards social development. The evaluation team felt that the present participatory evaluation of VERC's project supported by WaterAid was itself a learning exercise and valuable step towards strengthening the linkage between the institution and the community at large, creating a sense of involvement with the project. The month long evaluation built up the capacity of VERC's staff in the use of participatory approaches. On its own initiative, VERC deputed a few staff members to different workshops and seminars organised by NGOs and INGOs in Bangladesh. Training initiatives included the SAFE workshop organised by CARE. Two persons attended for two days at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDRB) and one person attended the 'Facts for Life' workshop organised by UNICEF in Dhaka for two days. In both phases of the project, VERC has given training to the Assistant Project Officers, Health Motivators, Imams, school teachers, masons and caretakers. VERC training targets and achievements for Phase I of the project were met and are on schedule for Phase II. Recommendations
UNICEF has been involved in a school sanitation project, a social mobilisation campaign and has recently launched a National Communication Strategy which involves working with schools, local government counterparts, NGOs and with television. The Voluntary Health Service Society (VHSS) works in the health sector and has a network of NGO members. The CARE SAFER project is currently working only with hygiene education and claims to have significantly reduced diarrhoea in its project areas. It supports a participatory approach to the planning, implementation and monitoring of hygiene education programmes. Although CARE offers training workshops in hygiene education and has currently trained 60 NGOs nation-wide, none of the staff from VERC headquarters have attended any of these courses. Recommendations
Community management and maintenance systems have contributed to the sustainability of VERC projects. During Phase I, two caretakers, one male and one female were selected and trained by the tubewell-boring mistri (skilled labourers) during the tubewell installation. These two persons are responsible for the management and the maintenance of the tubewell. During Phase II, a group of 5 to 7 people from among tubewell beneficiaries form a tubewell management committee. The committee is also comprised of 2 caretakers. This committee is responsible for the management and maintenance of the tubewell and has arranged regular meetings and discussions to discuss relevant matters. This committee is also raising a regular maintenance fund, handled by the committee's cashier. To date, no management inputs in the form of training have been provided to these committees by VERC. As noted elsewhere in this report, current WaterAid projects provide heavy subsidies. Usually, a uniform subsidy is given to villagers for the construction of latrines and installation of tubewells, irrespective of the geographical locations, poverty conditions and other socio-economic factors. These subsidies are neither desirable nor sustainable, though they continue to be a point of debate. It is very difficult to target subsidies and very often better off sections of society benefit from these subsidies. As a limited contribution, VERC has started credit programmes in some of its programme areas simultaneously with its WATSAN programme. These have been enthusiastically embraced by village women. In some cases, small credit schemes for income-generating activities for women group members provided new opportunities and activities to the groups. On a final note, problems with staff retention have been reported in the Chittagong and Teknaf regions. There are also many more staff from the Central and Northern parts of the country, as compared with local staff from the South. Recommendations
Since WaterAid-UK started supporting VERC projects in 1986-87, five projects have been funded on a 100% grant basis. The amount of project funding also increased to 150% over the last ten years. In the 1996 Phase-II of the VERC project, WaterAid made provision for beneficiaries to contribute to capital costs rather than solely accumulating maintenance funds as was the case previously. Apart from extending the financial support for programme implementation, little inputs in terms of organisational development, staff capacity-building, strengthening technological innovations and replicability of programmes were provided by WaterAid. Programme support or other functional linkages beyond the project period to increase the sustainability were also not established. The situation is complicated because of difficult accessibility, poor infrastructure and very thick coverage of development organisations. This is coupled with intermittent post cyclone relief and high density pockets of migrated population. Few location specific strategies to tackle these issues have been developed. The present implementation is very traditional and does not incorporate elements to reflect changes taking place in the water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector. It is unlikely to result in the development of models that will advance the sector. Further, WSS Committees are not sustainable in the long run and very often they quickly become ineffective. WaterAid is well organised with a small project area and is currently experiencing no undue pressure to meet physical targets. It is in an ideal position to develop realistic institutional mechanisms for WSS projects which respond to changing needs. Only very recently, new concepts of programme planning and of ensuring peoples participation using various participatory tools have been emphasised.
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