|
|
|
Report summary of WELL Task No. 323 (Part A) Provision of water and sanitation services to small townsAuthors: Jeremy Colin and Joy Morgan Editor: Julie Woodfield List of acronyms
Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the people consulted in Uganda and India for their co-operation in producing this report, especially Mr David Kane, Ms Eva Ntege and Mr Jamil SSebalu in Uganda and Mr Gopalakrishnan in Cochin, Kerala for their contributions. Table of contents 3. Key findings: Uganda (Kumi and Wobulenzi)
4. Key findings: India (Chertala and Ponani)
5. Lessons for small town water supply and sanitation
6. Implications for the future The purpose of this study was to review the planning, implementation and operation of water, sanitation and environmental health programmes in small towns in Uganda and India, in order to identify successes and failures that can provide guidance for the development of small towns programmes. Part A of the report synthesises the lessons learned from the case studies Part B of the report provides a detailed description and situation analysis of the four case study towns This study comes at a time of increasing interest in the water and sanitation needs of small towns in less developed countries, an area that until recently received little international attention. In early 2000 the One World web site hosted a Small Towns Water and Sanitation Electronic Conference and some 350 participants took part. The conference defined small towns thus: ‘Small towns are settlements that are sufficiently large and dense to benefit from the economies of scale offered by piped systems, but too small and dispersed to be efficiently managed by a conventional urban water utility. They require formal management arrangements, a legal basis for ownership and management, and the ability to expand to meet the growing demand for water. Small towns usually have populations between 5,000 and 50,000 but can be larger or smaller.’ The conference also identified five common institutional models for service delivery, and much of the discussion concerned their relative merits. Participants did not identify one model as ideal but the conference report did highlight ‘…a growing need for innovative management models that provide good quality, affordable services that are sustainable and able to be expanded.’ In this study we carried out a situation analysis of water supply and sanitation (including excreta disposal, solid waste management and storm drainage) in four small towns: two in Uganda and two in India in which the institutional contexts were notably different. Our objective was to understand the existing situation and to attempt to distil out certain basic principles and identify common elements of good practice, rather than come up with ‘innovative management models’. The south Indian state of Kerala has a developed a decentralised framework for planning known as the People’s Planning Campaign. This offers the opportunity to explore a pioneering state-wide approach to the planning and implementation of municipal services. In Uganda, the operating framework is less clearly defined and the two case study towns had quite different institutional arrangements for service delivery. In Wobulenzi, water users associations were set up, whereas in Kumi, services were provided through the traditional approach of municipal service delivery. Field research was conducted by teams of local and international consultants and included a study of available documents and data, interviews with key informants and site visits. 3. KEY FINDINGS: UGANDA (Kumi and Wobulenzi) 3.1 Context There is a certain lack of consistency in the policy and legal framework for the management of small town water and sanitation services in Uganda. The Water Statute (1995) introduced a tiered management structure for designated ‘water and sanitation areas’ comprising (from user level upwards) Water User Groups, Water and Sanitation Committees and Water Users’ Associations. These would collectively plan and manage schemes in designated locations and collect user charges to fund maintenance. Local councils could organise the formation of these groups but overall responsibility was vested in the Directorate of Water Development, a central government department. More recently, the Local Government Act (1997) brought in alternative management arrangements under the banner of decentralisation. Central government retained responsibility for water resources and the environment but responsibility for water supply and environmental health was transferred from the Directorate of Water Development to district (rural) and town councils. The Government of Uganda recognises the need to harmonise the two acts but in the meantime the Directorate of Water Development has retained a limited role as promoter of major capital investments in water and sanitation. Schemes developed under the Directorate employ the tiered management structure outlined above. The Ugandan study towns have quite different institutional arrangements for water supply services that reflect the above differences in approach. The water supply systems in both towns suffered from serious constraints to the levels of service provided, but for significantly different reasons:
Sanitation (excreta disposal) is primarily a household responsibility, although there is some provision of public toilets by the town councils, which tends to be inadequate. Hygiene promotion is also the responsibility of the councils; in Kumi, there was an understanding of the importance of this work, but activities were constrained by the simple lack of basic education materials. The important lesson from these small towns is that the essence of good water supply and sanitation services lies in a clear and simple management structure with full accountability to the community. This demonstrates that it is the way in which a particular model works in practice, rather than its theoretically desirable or fashionable features, that is important. The following sections describe the key points in more detail. 3.2 Roles and responsibilities The conflicting provisions of the 1995 Water Statute and the 1997 Local Government Act have created an open forum for political wrangles. The statutes require harmonisation; it would be logical for responsibility for water and sanitation services to lie with town councils. In Wobulenzi a complicated, multi-tiered management structure had been introduced involving the Directorate of Water Development, Wobulenzi Town Council, Wobulenzi Water Users Association and numerous water user groups. The responsibilities of each were unclear, leading to mismanagement and a lack of institutional ownership or accountability, as a result of which all stakeholders expressed significant dissatisfaction with the water supply scheme. In Kumi, meanwhile, institutional arrangements were much simpler since the town council had a clear mandate through which it was managing the water supply scheme relatively well. The problems in Wobulenzi indicate a pressing need to simplify institutional arrangements and encourage each stakeholder to fulfil their agreed roles. 3.3 Accountability Town councils need to be responsive to the needs of their people, and here again a simple management structure would help by enhancing transparency and promoting trust, especially in financial management. Good publicity around any loan or grant-aided investment (including income/expenditure accounts and development plans) would further increase accountability and encourage the users to monitor closely the deployment of funds. Transparency proved highly effective in Kumi which has a traditional municipally managed service; despite the failings of the water supply scheme, the council was winning support from residents due to its openness about the problems being faced. 3.4 Participation Participation of users in towns is more complicated than in rural areas. In Uganda, many town dwellers live in rented accommodation and some feel little responsibility for local development while others are supportive but unable to spend much time on voluntary activities. As a result, the few who do take an active role in projects and committees are often those with political or other ambitions. This was a significant problem in Wobulenzi, where the failure of user groups was compounded by a lack of clarity over the role of the groups and backtracking in promises of payment to members. Effective participation requires the selection of representatives genuinely committed to their community, not simply those who own land, are wealthy enough to spend time on voluntary work or want to increase their power or status. Good publicity around the selection of project committee members would increase the accountability and quality of the committees. Service providers need to maintain a dialogue with users, but consultation can be counter-productive if users’ concerns are not taken on board and incorporated in service design; loyalty can be bought with promises but is lost when those promises are not fulfilled. Being responsive to users may require compromise on some issues; the service provider should not simply adhere to fixed norms and procedures. In Kumi, there was inadequate consultation between donor, town council authorities and the beneficiaries on the design of both the water supply and the excreta disposal systems. 3.5 Sanitation Approximately 60-70 per cent of the population are covered by household latrines, which is generally believed to be high for small towns in Uganda. In Kumi, sanitation promotion activities have had some effect, which is being reflected through an increasing coverage of household latrines. Health and hygiene education are provided by municipal health inspection teams. The major constraint facing staff is a lack of education materials and limited knowledge of effective health and hygiene promotion techniques. The current approach is limited to home visits, lectures and enforcement. These are typical of the relatively simple deficiencies that could easily be rectified through local capacity building. Occasionally officers have failed to enforce public health legislation because the landlords of tenanted property are apparently above the law. The Town Councils are responsible for solid waste management and drainage. In Wobulenzi there was general satisfaction amongst residents as a result of an externally funded project, which increased the number of staff employed and provided additional equipment. 4. KEY FINDINGS: INDIA (Chertala and Ponani) 4.1 Context Decentralisation of government services is well advanced in the state of Kerala in south-west India; at the municipal level, increased responsibility has been devolved back to locally elected councils who are responsible for development works covering a range of basic services. The People’s’ Planning Campaign (PPC) provides the operational mechanism for decentralised planning, budgeting and implementation of these local plans. Through a hierarchical compilation of annual plans produced from ward to state level, the PPC aims to identify local needs and establish local development options through a process of consultation and participation of local people. (Plummer and De Cleene, 1999). The PPC is remarkable not only for its design and unified approach, but for the extent to which the state government has made staff at all levels and the public aware of the rules, roles and responsibilities under which the scheme operates. The framework is well defined, transparent and respected by all concerned Water supply across the state remains the responsibility of the Kerala Water Authority (KWA). Management of municipal water supplies was not handed back to municipal councils under the decentralisation process, although there are provisions for this to take place if there is a demand from a particular municipality. Water supply improvements are undertaken through the PPC and often form an important component of the local development plans. Work is normally implemented by the KWA using the plan funds available through the PPC; this is known as ‘deposit works’. KWA is responsible for operations and maintenance. The towns in Kerala were operating under the same institutional framework, namely the Peoples’ Planning Campaign, but with different constraints and aspirations:
The key contrasts in Kerala therefore relate to the different state-wide approaches firstly of the Kerala Water Authority and secondly of decentralised municipal planning through the PPC. The People’s Planning Campaign has had a very positive impact on the cost-effective development of infrastructure and services and represents a major step forward from the previous framework under which development activities were the sole preserve of professionals and administrators in government departments. When considering the management of small town water supplies, however, the picture is more mixed, with substantial achievements in some areas while other difficulties remain unresolved. The implications of key aspects of the campaign PPC for small town water supply and sanitation services are considered below 4.2 Roles and responsibilities An important task in the development of viable small town water supplies is identifying appropriate institutional arrangements for production and distribution. These case studies offer some insight into management by the municipality, by the Water Authority and by the community. The Kerala Water Authority has not, in the cases studied, acquitted itself well in terms of water quality, quantity, reliability or cost recovery. Even when it receives development funds through the campaign, the Authority tends to be extremely slow in implementing works. The Government of Kerala Planning Board has recently highlighted this as a state-wide problem; the Water Authority does not appear to be an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign, which is reducing its role as the sole provider of municipal water supplies. The arguments for retaining this agency as manager of small town schemes are not strong, and relate mostly to technical expertise and the ability to manage schemes serving several locations simultaneously. Neither problem would be insurmountable following the transfer of a scheme to the municipality: a much-reduced water authority could continue providing technical support. Production and distribution could be managed separately for shared schemes. In the short-term, Water Authority performance in completing plan fund works could be improved by designating it as an official implementing agency for the campaign; deposit works would then be subject to the one-year deadline applicable to other campaign projects. Under the People’s Planning Campaign, municipalities in Kerala are more motivated, more flexible, and more responsive to community demands than the Water Authority and could potentially be more effective managers of the local water supply provided technical support was secured. There is thus a strong argument in favour of transferring at least independent schemes to municipal management, if accompanied by measures to transform the schemes from financial liabilities into self-sustaining assets. The case studies also suggest that devolution of management (including financial management) to ward level may be possible for small independent schemes. There may in fact be much to gain from developing a portfolio of small schemes operated in this way rather than large, centralised ones that are expensive and rarely well maintained. Some schemes of this former type are now appearing in Kerala and warrant close monitoring to explore their potential. 4.3 Accountability The PPC has demonstrated the value of establishing a comprehensive framework of rules, incentives and advice under which municipalities and line departments operate. The state government has gone to great lengths to ensure that the framework is understood at all levels and this has paid great dividends. There is a common understanding among officials, councillors and community representatives of the operating rules and the framework seems strong enough to function (albeit imperfectly) in every municipality, irrespective of the quality of local management. This is a tremendous achievement The downside, however, is that potentially important initiatives may not be taken at municipal level unless specifically required by campaign rules. Thus no attempt may be made to improve service cost recovery or promote the maintenance of new infrastructure. This situation is at least resolvable; if sufficient political will were generated, the operating rules could be modified to promote economically viable services, address the need for better strategic planning and ensure viable operation and maintenance arrangements are put in place. Cost recovery from users seems politically difficult at present but public confidence in local government has doubtless improved under the People’s Planning Campaign and there may well be a willingness to pay for better and more reliable services. This issue has received little attention so far and merits further investigation 4.4 Participation This system of development planning by the people with provision of technical support where necessary has proved very effective and has generated considerable enthusiasm in both community and municipality. Good communication between the municipality and service users is enabled and community priorities feed directly into the decision-making process. Moreover, the campaign has, on the whole, generated community support and confidence so that beneficiary groups have a high degree of ownership of projects and are willing to contribute towards the cost of development works from their own resources. This may be through materials, cash or labour. This offers considerable potential for the development of viable water and sanitation services in small towns, but the model does not yet address the following important issues. 4.4.1 Strategic planning Investments made in urban water and sanitation under the campaign are characterised by a succession of projects to address short-term needs in specific locations with insufficient consideration for the needs of the town as a whole and development of a comprehensive strategy. For example, for solid waste management, a few bins or trucks are purchased, but no prioritised schedule of improvements is devised to meet current and future needs, including the need for final disposal or primary collection services. 4.4.2 Operation and maintenance The decentralised approach does not deal with the challenge of operation and maintenance, which remain the responsibility of the Kerala Water Authority and the municipal councils and have to be funded by their own revenue sources. Having said this, the prospects for local user-based management of small, stand-alone water supply schemes appear quite good; in fact this is already happening in some rural locations in Kerala. Successful operation and maintenance of networked supplies, however, has not been achieved. 4.5 Sanitation The situation regarding sanitation in Kerala appears to be different from that prevailing across much of India. Latrine coverage in Kerala is reportedly high; both of the municipalities studied have accessed funding through the PPC for increasing coverage for urban poor groups. Both towns have problems with solid waste management where ad hoc investments are being made in plant and equipment but without the attendant need for developing effective strategies to cope with current or future waste disposal needs. With regard to drainage, small initiatives are undertaken in various locations but generally in a reactive way to resolve immediate problems as they arise; development and management of drainage networks as a whole is very poor. A constraint on all sanitation-related activity appears to be a lack of technical and managerial expertise. Further training and technical support may be needed in addition to the guidance already provided by the state government, especially to introduce cost–effective technologies and promote innovations that have proved successful elsewhere in India, such as household waste collection based on user payment. 5. LESSONS FOR SMALL TOWN WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION 5.1 Implications of town size The case studies challenge some common assumptions about the effects of small town size on service delivery. 5.1.1 Local capacity is not necessarily a constraint Municipal organisations may lack technical expertise but the demands of operating small town water supplies are often simple; the necessary skills could be acquired fairly easily, especially where small stand-alone schemes are developed. Developing the water source may be more complex, but for this the expertise could be outsourced. In both towns in Kerala, there was little evidence that the local office of the state Water Authority had a particularly high level of capacity; breakdowns were frequent and could be prolonged. Small town institutions also have, or can easily acquire, the capacity to collect user charges and manage water and sanitation funds. The main constraint on good financial management is not capacity but motivation; often the operating framework (especially the political environment) actively discourages cost recovery. Nevertheless, technical and managerial capacity can be low in small towns and service providers should make good use of external advice, while reserving the right to make decisions locally. In Wobulenzi, external advice at the design stage was ignored in project implementation to the detriment of both the water system and the socio-economic development of the town. 5.1.2 Small towns are potentially easy to manage Much has been said about the difficulties of managing small town water and sanitation services but there are also benefits to having a small population, as the Uganda studies have shown:
None of the studies indicated that a minimum ‘critical mass’ of population was required for a water supply scheme to be sustainable. Kumi, with only 17,000 population had a financially self-sustaining water supply scheme and a broadly satisfied electorate. 5.2 Elements of success The case studies support the conclusion that there is no ideal ‘off the shelf’ model for water and sanitation service delivery in small towns, which offers a global solution. The towns studied had very different service delivery arrangements, which had particular strengths and weaknesses. It is therefore inadvisable to promote or decry particular institutional models as a matter of general principle. It is the way in which any particular institutional model works in the local context that is more important, rather than the theoretical attributes of the model itself. The following are some of the chief characteristics found to underlie successful services. 5.2.1 Planning A notable feature of the Kumi case study, and both Kerala case studies was that the municipalities were ‘doing planning’, however imperfectly. They were beginning to monitor and review their work more carefully, to use management information, to prioritise, to consult users (especially in Kerala) and to set realistic goals. The manner in which this was done was far from perfect in Kerala but the campaign had nevertheless fostered a culture of planning within the municipalities. 5.2.2 Accountability Functional local management is essential for viable small town services. In Kerala this has been achieved via the People’s Planning Campaign, and was also evident in Kumi, Uganda. The managing body must also be accountable to the people served, and this requires clarity over who is responsible for what, and the likelihood of action in the event of failure to deliver. This requirement was not met in Wobulenzi, Uganda where the ultimate use of community contributions to water points was unclear, creating mistrust in the community. Decentralisation is a pre-requisite for local accountability and this provides a strong argument for the management of water and sanitation services at municipal level, whether by the municipality or a partner agency. There may be scope for devolution to ward level, although the viability of the new initiative in Chertala, Kerala is yet to be tested. Accountability in financial management is especially important. In Kerala the state government has gone to great lengths to ensure this for the People’s Planning campaign but the state Water Authority lacks both transparency and accountability; it has not proved to be a good manager of development funds. 5.2.3 Supportive operating framework Local management functions best if it is supported by a policy and institutional framework that establishes clear rules, roles and responsibilities, and this has been achieved in Kerala. Not only does this ensure that every actor knows their part; it also makes it unnecessary for each municipality to invent their own development process, something many small towns would be ill equipped to do. In Uganda, however, the policy framework is unclear, operating rules are confused and donor conditionality is more prominent than local agenda setting. In Wobulenzi, arrangements for water point management were complicated and inconsistent and disputes - especially financial disputes - hampered the operation of the system. All of this highlights a need for clear and simple local governance that is understood by all and suited to local human resource constraints. Another benefit of a strong framework is that it makes local government viable even when individual managers are weak. Too often, successful cases of service delivery rely on rare and dynamic managers who deliver results while they are in post but fail to establish viable long-term arrangements. In Kerala this problem has been overcome to some degree and even poorly managed towns are implementing the People’s Planning Campaign. Councillors also generally respect and follow the rules of the Campaign, in contrast to those in Wobulenzi who waived user charges on some borehole supplies, undermining the town scheme. 5.2.4 Obligation Unless good practices are made mandatory, only the few towns with strong, self-motivated managers are likely to develop adequate and reliable services. Both service providers and users should be under formally imposed obligations, to ensure that essential aspects of service delivery are in place. The main obligation of users should be to pay bills, while service providers should meet a number of basic requirements, namely: a) to ensure the economic viability of services User charges should be applied and collected at a rate that enables recovery of operating costs at the very least and, ideally, expansion or improved service levels in the future. This requirement was absent in Kerala, where operating costs were funded from non-revenue sources and officials felt no pressure to improve revenue collection or raise the level of service. Charges are set by the state government and it was considered politically very difficult to introduce direct cost recovery given the strong public expectation of free water. In Uganda, however, the idea of water as an economic good seemed to be accepted. In Kumi, the service provider was dependent on user charges for its survival and was remarkably effective both in the collection and management of funds; direct payment for water at the time of collection no doubt helped. The municipality received a conditional grant for water supply but had in any case made the scheme financially self-sustaining, enabling the grant to be used not for operational costs but for expansion of the network. Willingness to charge is just as important as willingness to pay. b) to ensure proper operation and maintenance The absence of operation and maintenance requirements emerges as a major weakness of the People’s Planning Campaign in Kerala, but one that could potentially be resolved by introducing it to the comprehensive rules governing the Campaign. c) to undertake a strategic planning process The need for strategic planning – as opposed to ad hoc expenditure on a succession of short-term priorities – emerges from the Kerala case studies. Only in Kumi was the service provider thinking beyond immediate needs to future expansion and improvement of the service to meet growing demand. To make these obligations effective they should be backed up by the real likelihood of remedial action in the event of non-compliance. For users that might mean disconnection; for the municipality it could mean financial penalties such as the withholding of development funds. 5.2.5 Incentives Even where formal obligations exist, service providers and users need appropriate incentives to encourage them to play their part actively. Public support can be difficult to achieve but is most likely to be secured where there is confidence in the service provider and support for the service delivery model. Both were evident in Kerala where the People’s Planning Campaign had facilitated an impressive level of community participation in the construction of new infrastructure and services. Willingness to pay and commitment to the development process were also high in Kumi whereas in Wobulenzi the water user group system had failed, due partly to bad planning. The case studies provide few clues to the creation a well motivated service provider, but this has evidently been achieved in Kumi where ‘Kumi Town Council staff are highly motivated and proactive, particularly in health education, and users do not feel alienated from town officials’ (see Part B). The creation of suitable incentives for good service delivery is a critical challenge for the sector. In Kerala, municipal officials had been energised by the new planning framework but the state Water Authority embodied all that can be wrong with conventional utility management, being remote from users and unresponsive to their concerns. 5.3 Private sector participation Small contractors operated public toilets in Kerala and in all the case studies the practice of using small contractors for the transportation of waste and some other municipal functions was well established. This study did not, however, reveal an obvious role for a conventional private sector operator in meeting the water supply needs of small towns. In Kerala, the prevailing political climate - particularly the lack of concern for cost recovery – offered few attractions for a private operator, suggesting that private sector participation could be a disaster where the appropriate policy and institutional framework is lacking. Small-scale independent providers were evident in Uganda, suggesting some need for their services, though the water they sold was three times the price of that sold from municipal kiosks. Consequently, they were not the providers of preference but had an important role in filling gaps in formal services. There was apparently scope for expanding the role of small-scale vendors but primarily to serve commercial, not domestic users. It is interesting to note that in Kumi, the municipality had a positive attitude to small-scale providers and had earlier supported a savings scheme for the water vendors’ association. 5.4 Sanitation Sanitation is a crucial issue that was generally neglected in the case study towns. In Kerala, both officials and residents highlighted sanitation in its broadest sense as a major problem yet no serious attempts were being made to develop better sanitation infrastructure and services, even where funds were available. This is an area in which technical capacity building was definitely needed; municipalities simply did not know how to resolve their problems, for example, drainage in waterlogged areas. Latrine construction was being undertaken on a significant scale but here, too, there were problems of technical competence and a failure to see latrine promotion as anything other than an exercise in construction. Municipalities were ill equipped to deliver, or even facilitate, effective hygiene promotion; again, there was a need for capacity building support. In Uganda, Wobulenzi did not fare any better but Kumi was an exceptional case, with hygiene education being provided by municipal staff (though the quality of the education was not clear). Elsewhere in Uganda, hygiene promotion is generally ignored and neither of the case studies was there a government latrine promotion initiative. 6. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE This study has reviewed the water supply and sanitation situation in four small towns in which the institutional framework has been wide ranging. The following key points emerged:
SUMMARY (PDF) .............. PART B (HTM) .....................BACK TO TOP Home > Resources > WELL studies > Provision of water and sanitation services to small towns |