Peri-urban water supply: a sustainable model in post-conflict Angola

One of the important challenges of post-war reconstruction is to provide more and better quality basic services, such as water. Previous attempts at upgrading main supply systems to accommodate peri-urban areas have been overwhelmed by the explosive demographic growth of Angola’s major cities brought about by many years of civil war.

A new paper [1] by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) documents strategies developed by the informal private sector and local communities themselves to meet the demand for water services that the Angolan Government has been unable to provide.

The paper demonstrates that local communities’ own engagement in the management of water distribution and their assumption of the responsibility for maintenance and the payment of service fees is a sustainable and affordable model. The paper also points out that building on the successes of existing locally driven initiatives, can bring national and international water targets closer to realisation and that local innovations not only improve water provision, but do so in a manner that involves and responds to the urban poor more than conventional water projects do.

Drawing on a literature review and the experience of Development Workshop (DW) in supporting peri-urban water services in Luanda, the paper provides lessons and recommendations for partnerships, financing and cost recovery, mapping tools, and scaling-up.

Angolan politicians have often defended the position that basic services should be free of charge, but this has in practice resulted in a lack of funds being available for maintenance of the existing services. Central government income from the country’s extractive industries has rarely trickled down to basic service provision in peri-urban and rural areas and as a result, the poor find themselves paying more for essential services from the private sector or losing income because of frequent illness from contaminated water.

An opposite position, the “privatization” approach, has been promoted by international financial institutions, resulting in an obsession with “profitability”, with little attention being paid to affordability, accountability, maintenance, and regulation.

To provide a sustainable service, it is necessary to adopt cost-recovery principles and to charge an affordable fee for water that is used to keep the local infrastructure operational. Relying solely on centralized funds from the state budget to maintain local infrastructure in the peri-urban bairros has proved unrealistic. An inevitable part of developing sustainable basic services is the creation of accountable institutions. These principles have been incorporated into the legal framework for water services that has been formulated in the Water Law, 6/02, published in 2002. This document provides an overall policy and strategies and defines the organisational structures for an integrated management of the water resources. In this document amongst other regulations, it is indicated that users should pay a financial contribution (“taxes”) for the maintenance of their water systems.

In 2008 the Government launched the “Agua para Todos“ or Water for All Programme. At its launch the National Water Director made a public commitment to provide water to communities “wherever they are” signaling a new more inclusive government policy to bring water to poor-previously excluded communities.

[1] Cain, A. and Mulenga, M. (2009) Water service provision for the peri-urban poor in post-conflict Angola. (Human settlements working paper series. Water ; 8). London, UK, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 56 p. ; 10 fig., 8 photos, 15 tab. ISBN 978-1-84369-754-1

Download full publication

Output-Based Aid: an OBA Facility for the water and sanitation sector in Honduras

Results and lessons learned from a pilot Output-Based Aid (OBA) facility are presented in a new note [1] by the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA).

Honduras has achieved a reasonable level of access to water supply and sanitation, but gaps in coverage remain, especially in rural and peri-urban areas, and service quality for those with access is often poor. To help the Government of Honduras achieve universal coverage and improve service quality, the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA) is funding a project to test the viability of an innovative output-based aid mechanism for financing water and sanitation services. Housed within the Honduran Social Investment Fund, this “OBA Facility”—the first such facility funded by GPOBA—aims to improve access to water and sanitation services for about 15,000 low-income households, and to increase efficiency and transparency in sector investment funding. To be eligible for funding from the OBA Facility, projects must meet specific criteria and payments are made against verifiable results.

Results and Lessons Learned

The establishment of an OBA Facility is not without challenges. Unlike a traditional OBA project, the OBA Facility funds a number of projects with many characteristics. Some lessons learned from the implementation
include the following:

• The original structure envisaged that the regulatory agency ERSAPS would act as the OBA Facility’s independent verifier of outputs. However, the regulator’s actual capacity (both technical and financial) is very weak. Accordingly, it was necessary to hire consultants to act as verification agents.

• The use of technical assistance funds is crucial for enhancing implementers’ capacity to execute projects, particularly in the case of poor municipalities or communities.

• The eligibility methodology, as currently devised, gives an advantage to projects that are able to supplement funding from other donors or other sources. Furthermore, the ranking methodology tends to favour areas with high population density and flat topography. Giving a high weight to the greatest number of beneficiary households for every dollar of subsidy spent means that small communities are less likely to benefit from the scheme. Water service provision is more expensive for projects that require pumping; thus those projects may not be deemed eligible or may be assigned a lower ranking score.

• The increase in construction prices has made it necessary to lower physical targets and to adjust benchmark costs used to determine eligibility and rank projects. Cost increases between the time the contract is signed and the work is executed pose a significant risk to implementers.

• Establishing a more efficient and accountable way to use public money for investments in the sector will take time. In particular, donors in Honduras use input-based funding mechanisms (which do not require implementers to assume any prefinancing risk) and provide a higher subsidy for capital costs. It is hoped that through the results of the pilot OBA Facility, stakeholders—notably donors that are willing to fund investments—will progressively adopt the OBA approach to channel funds in the sector, in order to improve access and increase the service level to underserved or unserved communities on a wider scale. Using the mechanism already established by the OBA Facility for all projects in the sector would also reduce transaction costs for the government.

• It is too early to tell whether using an OBA approach as opposed to a traditional approach to funding sector investments reduces the time needed for implementation. However, this experience does suggest that setting up an OBA Facility takes time.

• The actual needs on the ground are somewhat different from what had been expected at project design. For example, the project assumed that there would be a demand for yard taps, while users actually want and are willing to pay for house connections.

Conclusions

A number of challenges have been identified when using an OBA Facility. To a certain extent, the jury is still out as to whether an OBA Facility is right for Honduras. FHIS is considering applying an OBA approach to all its funding for the sector if the pilot facility is successful; it could even be extended to all publicly funded water and sanitation projects in Honduras.

The benefits of using an OBA Facility approach for water and wastewater sector investments include the following:

• The process by which projects are chosen may become fairer and more transparent, as projects are evaluated according to their respective merits and compared against one another.

• The fact that payments are linked to outputs sharpens the implementers’ focus on results and improves the quality of monitoring and evaluation, since all results must be validated through independent verification agents.

• Tariffs for each project must cover at least operation and maintenance costs, in contrast to the current situation in Honduras, where many service providers barely cover their operating costs and defer maintenance.

• For public implementers, prefinancing is available through bridge loans. While this type of financing involves complex arrangements between the loan recipient (the implementer) and the government, it places responsibility on the implementer to achieve or meet the agreed results. This enhances accountability for the use of such funds.

• For private implementers, prefinancing can be arranged by tapping their own revenues or through local commercial banks.

• Some of the projects funded by the OBA Facility complement upstream investments supported by other donors. OBA Facility-supported projects filled in a critical gap in these efforts. Cases include SANAA and San Agustin, where the European Union and USAID respectively have funded water distribution trunks, but water connections have not been installed for all beneficiaries and sanitation infrastructure is still missing.

The OBA Facility also builds upon and strengthens good practices in the sector, such as the contribución por mejoras initiative, under which municipal governments negotiate the cost-sharing and payment arrangement with community residents for the installation of new public works; as well as community work in-kind, local government involvement, and community participation in decision making.

[1] Mandri-Perrott, C., Schiffler, M. and Aguilera, A.S. (2009). Output-based aid in Honduras : an OBA Facility for the water and sanitation sector in Honduras. (OBApproaches note ; no. 29). Washington, DC, USA, Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA). 6 p.

Read the full note

Political economy, water and the MDGs

Water resource management is critical for the achievement of many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Too often, the political economy issues that determine whether or not water resources are managed effectively are overlooked. Drawing on research from the Lake Victoria region, ODI Research Officer Simon O’Meally argues in an opinion piece [1] for a greater focus on political economy issues in the drive to reach the MDGs that relate to water.

“Sustaining services continues to be a problem, and integrated water resources management (IWRM) remains
an aspiration rather than a reality. One reason for this is that current approaches to water resources management are devoid of politics – the missing piece of the water puzzle”, O’Meally writes.

O’Meally highlights three lessons from the World Bank-funded Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project (LVEMP):

Power and vested interests in water resources management – institutional and legal reforms were only enforced patchily. One reason was a lack of government capacity, but vested interests also hindered change, for example various lake-shore industries opposed stringent regulations on water pollution, calling instead for ‘voluntary’ standards. Enforcement problems were also linked to systems of political patronage. Such political economy insights can help practitioners to pinpoint the processes that hinder water reform and to devise strategic entry points to address these barriers. In this case, one entry point should be the support of mechanisms to involve a wider range of Lake Victoria ‘stakeholders’ in public financial planning.

Political contestation of ‘sustainable water management’ – ‘sustainable water management’ schemes also faced political economic obstacles – one of which was that ‘sustainable water management’ was highly contested. Contrary to some donor narratives, ‘sustainable development’ can mean different things to different actors, depending on their interests, values and ideology. Indeed, some blockages in LVEMP can be attributed to disagreements over what it meant to operationalise ‘sustainable water management’. Certain reforms were stalled because elites in Ministries of Finance prioritised economic growth
and macro-economic stabilisation, which conflicted with the goals of the more ‘conservationist’ elites
in Ministries of Water. Equally, various community organisations and front-line fishing communities resisted LVEMP schemes, arguing that there should be a major redistribution of water resource ownership before ‘sustainable’ resource use could be achieved. Collective action was hampered because the various groups did not have a shared goal to work towards. Practitioners should be aware that their approach is not politically neutral and may well be contested and resisted. By better appreciating this, practitioners can identify the actors who are likely to support, or oppose, their understanding of water management, and can promote consensus-building that goes ‘with the grain’ of political reality.

Knowledge: for whom and for what? Like many donors, the World Bank sees itself as a ‘technical’ agency (rather than a political actor) so it commissions scientific and economic water resource analyses. For LVEMP, most studies focused on ‘cataloguing’ natural resources, mapping pollution ‘hotspots’,
cost-benefit analyses and value-addition strategies. This knowledge can, to a degree, tell us where problems are and what could be done to solve them, but not how to make these recommendations a reality. Systematic political and socio-economic analysis is also needed to understand, for instance, why many of LVEMP’s findings were shelved and not integrated into political and policymaking processes, or why it is that many community groups resisted the co-management initiatives. Technical ‘soundness’ alone does not, it seems, guarantee political uptake.

This case suggests that astute political economy analysis has the potential to help donors improve the effectiveness of their water management assistance. Political economy is not, however, a panacea
and should complement, rather than replace, the more conventional development tools. But it is indispensable for identifying viable entry points for assistance, reducing the risk of doing harm and increasing the chances of success. In particular political economy could be used to unpick the political economic constraints on ‘sustainable’ water use, which is vital for meeting MDG 7.

[1] O’Meally, S. (2009). Political economy, water and the MDGs. (ODI opinion ; 136). London, UK, Overseas Development Institute. 2 p.

Read the full opinion piece

Sector learning: the Resource Centre Network approach in Honduras

Sector learning is a new thematic area of the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.

Sector learning seeks to systemise the capture and sharing of experiences in the WASH sector and to develop the sector’s capacity to reflect on the lessons. It provides a framework at the national level to create, transfer and mobilise knowledge for better service delivery.

An IRC powerpoint presentation illustrates how sector learning is facilitated in Honduras by a network of resource centres led by CHRECIAS (Centro Hondureño de Recursos de Conocimiento e Información en agua y saneamiento). The presentation gives an introduction to sector learning and explains how it could improve WASH sector performance. It then proposes a number of roles the resource centre network and its central unit or secretariat can play to facilitate this.

View the powerpoint presentation, IRC, 07 September 2009

See also an earlier case study about CHRECIAS.

Public-private partnerships: evaluation of ADB’s performance in infrastructure

The Asian Development Bank’s support for public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure development in general was rated “successful,” a special evaluation study concludes [1].  There are, however, areas for improvements for both, public sector and ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) operations, as implied by lower performance ratings in some specific areas and sectors.

For the water sector, the report recommends the PPP modalities that improve systems performance should be promoted. This means that the ADB should promote performance-based management contracts and affermages/leases, at least as strongly as the build-operate-transfer (BOT) type interventions. Decisions should be guided by the overall objective of minimizing investment and operating costs of the entire system and need to be sensitive to local political conditions and aspirations. Attracting private capital rather than achieving gains in technical, managerial, and allocative efficiencies is often wrongly perceived as the primary purpose of PPPs.

Since the 1990s, there is an increased use of PPP schemes that involve fiscal support to facilitate private sector participation (PSP) in water projects, which have had problems attracting private investment due to difficulties associated with predicting demand and charging cost-reflective tariffs.

ADB has implemented PPP in the water sector in many countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka in South Asia, and in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines in East Asia. ADB’s support has included technical assistance and policy dialogue for sector reforms and commercialisation of water utilities.

The report notes that two-thirds of approved PSOD water transactions had to be cancelled due to disputes between project promoters and authorities, limitations of the BOT modality, and unresolved tariff issues. This highlights PSOD’s particular difficulties in identifying viable transactions in this sector despite numerous attempts to become more engaged.

Opposition to change and fear of consequences (job losses, higher tariffs, loss of political control) and resistance by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) opposed to private sector entry have thwarted many attempts to introduce PPP, particularly in the water sector. The development of PPPs was also derailed in several countries, e.g., Indonesia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, due to changes in (local) government commitment. Sustained political will and support of key stakeholders is therefore seen as the ultimate determinant of PPP success.

[1] Feig, H. and Finlayson, B. (2009). ADB assistance for public-private partnerships in infrastructure development : potential for more success : evaluation study. Manila, The Philippines, Asian Development Bank. ix, 65 p. : fig., tab. 15 ref.
Download full report [PDF file]

Municipal service delivery: new accounting software improves transparency in Kerala, India

The financial transparency of urban local bodies (ULBs) in the south Indian state of Kerala has increased thanks to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) project. The municipal corporations of Cochin and Trivandrum now publish their financial accounts online.

The ADB technical assistance (TA) project “Capacity Building for Municipal Service Delivery in Kerala” (2006-2008) assisted municipal corporations and selected municipalities to (i) improve their capacity to organize, record, update, and manage financial and other information on a routine basis; (ii) increase the efficiency and integrity of the data being collected; and (iii) promote good governance in relation to financial management. The TA project aimed to help ensure the sustainability of the investments under the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (Loan 2226-IND), a $221.2 million loan approved by ADB on 20 December 2005 and which became effective on 19 March 2007.

The TA project successfully installed and implemented municipal accounting software in five municipal corporations and two municipalities. As a result of continuous recording, updating and managing financial information on a routine basis using accrual-based double-entry accounting, they managed to publish their financial statement regularly.

Some of the major lessons are:

• Accounting system alone does not do anything – it is just software. It became meaningful when the necessary financial information is entered in accordance with the new accounting policy, which had to developed. The necessary financial information includes the past income and expenditure, assets and liability, and cash flow statement for the last five years. In ULBs, there are backlogs in accounts for four to five years. Recovery of the backlogs and data entry tasks absorbed enormous amount of ULB staff’s and consultants’ time.

• Feeding income and expenditure information can be computerized by connecting the accounting system with the Payroll module and the demand collection balance (DCB) module. Staff salary is the largest expenditure item in the ULB and computerization by the payroll module will bring efficiency in accounts work. The DCB module compares (a) demand: how much to be collected, (b) collection: how much actually collected, (c) balance: how much is still due. This will help ULB in capturing the amount of the uncollected in tax and charges for urban service delivery, which is a good start for ‘management accounting.’ However, the amount of data entry is the same as the number of households in one ULB—again, this requires enormous amount of time and labour.

Read the full Technical Assistance Completion Report

Lessons from implementing water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion activities in the coastal belt of Bangladesh

A new document [1] describes the key lessons learned from the large Coastal Belt Project, which was supported by Danida and the Government of Bangladesh during 1997-2009. The document highlights the processes, achievements and challenges of providing more than 12 years of extensive assistance to rural and small towns water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion in the coastal regions of Bangladesh. During the years the project gradually changed its implementation modalities towards a high degree of alignment with national institutions and systems, including use of national planning and budgeting processes and public procurement rules.

The Project was largely successful in achieving its physical targets of more than 30,000 arsenic-free deep hand tube wells (DHTWs) and promoting construction of over 300,000 household latrines, construction of piped water supply in core areas of nine pourashavas, albeit with delays and additional costs.

The Project was implemented as a bilaterally-executed project. This gives rise to inherent differences resulting from parallel management structures, multiple sets of roles and rules and differing personal and institutional loyalties.

Following the devastating cyclone Sidr (“The Eye”) in November 2007, the Project constructed 1,050 additional tube wells, 1,000 household latrines and other infrastructure in storm-ravaged areas.

Photo from the Danida report

The sustainability of DHTWs and household latrines in rural areas is seen as high. Additional management and technical support is required to ensure the long-term sustainability of piped water supplies in pourashavas and mini-piped systems in rural areas, as well as public toilets and school latrines.

The Project’s efforts to assist pourashavas to improve solid waste management and drainage was less than successful. The situation in pourashavas in these areas remains unsatisfactory. There are serious difficulties locating sanitary dumping sites, which pose a potentially serious environmental hazard.

Following the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, the Project’s planning process and management has been more closely aligned with GOB and DPHE’s systems and procedures.

During its long life, the Project produced a wealth of documentation; manuals, guidelines, training and IEC/BCC materials. This material constitutes an important part of the Project’s contribution to the sector. Some of the most important and useful of these materials are listed in the publication.

In spite of its long life, the Project leaves behind unmet demand and a number of unresolved issues which will to a large extent determine the long-term impact of the Project’s many achievements.

A number of factors are seen as contributing to the Project’s successful achievements.

1. Conducive policies, strategies, regulations, rules and procedures adopted and practiced in implementing organizations
2. Experienced and dedicated professional/technical staff
3. Responsibility, commitment and accountability for results at all levels
4. Firm commitment to guidelines and procedures for poverty targeting, social mobilization and siting of facilities
5. Rate and quality of DHTW construction
6. Social mobilization/customer briefings supported by high quality IEC materials
7. Adequate cost-sharing to promote ownership
8. Cooperation from DPHE and local government (pourashava mayors and UP chairmen)
9. Appropriate and adaptable technologies to suit various hydrogeological conditions
10. Thorough documentation, accurate reporting, MIS and database updated and used
11. Baseline data, effect monitoring and impact assessments
12. Post-construction technical and managerial support for urban and school WSS facilities

The Project has helped to produce a number of competent sector professionals who continue to make important contributions to the sector. Outside the coastal belt, this may prove to be one of the Project’s most important and lasting legacies.

[1] Pendley, C.J. and Minhaj Uddin Ahmad, A.J. (2009). Learning from experience : lessons from implementing water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion activities in the coastal belt of Bangladesh. Dhaka, Bangladesh, Royal Danish Embassy. 27 p.
Download full document [PDF file]

Web sites:

• Danish Embassy Bangladesh – Water & Sanitation
• Bangladesh – Department of Public Health Engineering
• GoB-Danida WSS Policy Support Unit

Contact persons:

• Dr. Guna N. Paudyal, Danida Senior Adviser, Bangladesh. (e-mail: guna [at] hysawa.org)
• Dr. Niaz Chowdhury, Programme Officer, Embassy of Denmark (e-mail: niacho [at] um.dk)
• Mr. Jan Møller Hansen, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Denmark, Dhaka. (e-mail: janmha [at] um.dk)

Rainwater harvesting: increasing food security in South Africa

It is estimated that 19 million people in South Africa are rural survivalists with traditional agrarian lifestyles. Of these at least 15 million individuals are living below the poverty line. In contrast farming contributes only 10% of material income for rural livelihoods. Furthermore, land resources in communal areas are largely under-utilised. In some villages in the Eastern Cape and Free State province, levels of food security have increased by means of maize and vegetable production in homestead backyard gardens. In the last mentioned case, this has been achieved through the technology and practice of in-field rainwater harvesting (IRWH) and conservation. This technique has been developed over fifteen years of on-station and on-farm research. It can be classified as a micro-catchment, on-farm method of water harvesting with runoff strips. “Through technology exchange the application of IRWH expanded to more than 1 000 households in 42 rural villages around Thaba Nchu” says Dr Gerhard Backeberg a Water Research Commission Director, in his paper presented in Göttingen, Germany, 14 to 16 July 2009 during the 2nd International Seminar on “Land Resources and Land Use Options”.

Large areas of croplands surrounding these villages are currently lying fallow and indications are that this land has not been productively cultivated for the last 25 years or more. There are clearly opportunities for up-scaling of IRWH from household food gardens to communal croplands. “Results of research station experiments demonstrate that e.g. maize yields increased by up to 50%, compared with conventional production techniques” says Gerhard. Innovative procedures have been developed and tested to identify suitable soils for rainwater harvesting. Through modeling the minimum area of farmland has been determined to meet the food security needs, expressed as either income or caloric requirement. It has also been shown that IRWH is viable in terms of conservation of soil and water resources, reduction of risk, social acceptability and economic feasibility. However, delineating suitable soils and calculating sizes of land holdings is only part of the solution to improve water productivity and rural livelihoods. Surveys in the area have shown that low levels of education are found amongst household members and that widespread poverty exists. Although the expectation is that exploitation of this land can enable households to produce enough staple grain crops for own consumption and also earn cash income with sale of surpluses, various obstacles have to be overcome.

In his presentation he mentioned that the current state of land use at Thaba Nchu is the result of a history of conflicts over legitimate rights and economic means to earn livelihoods. As for the whole of South Africa, a process of land reform is under way, which involves amongst others obtaining tenure security because of past discriminatory practices. The contention is therefore that communal croplands will only be accessed sustainably with secure land tenure arrangements. A pilot project to develop a land register of holdings by households on the communal croplands has confirmed the near collapse of the land tenure system. After consultation a participatory process has started to formulate rules that explicitly define the land holding and ensure exclusive use of the land for cultivation. Various formal groups have been established to ensure enforcement of rules and enable transfer of use rights by means of share-cropping or leases between those who are interested and not interested to farm. Successful up-scaling of IRWH will again require demonstration plots to change unrealistic perceptions regarding prospects of conventional tillage. Farmers, who are mostly women, must also receive skills training and have aspirations to improve livelihoods through more productive farming activities. “The available guide for farmer trainers and facilitators should be implemented for practical skills development to the benefit of women and revitalisation of rain-fed farming” says Dr Backeberg. Further applied research is also being undertaken to investigate appropriate marketing channels of food crops, financing of production inputs and support services of extension which have to be provided to farmers.

Read the full paper

Related web site: Multiple Use water Services Group

Source: Hlengiwe Cele, WRC, 18 Sep 2009

Water safety plans: assuring drinking water quality in rural South Africa

The Water Research Commission (WRC) has completed yet another study that aims to meet the water quality requirements of people in South Africa. There has been exponential growth of small treatment plants in the country with many of these being situated in rural areas with limited technical support. “Management of these water supply systems has been very difficult and water service authorities have to rely on limited resources to ensure that the water supply meets the minimum standards in terms of quantity and quality” says Dr Jo Burgess, the WRC research manager responsible for the project. A generic Water Safety Plan (WSP) manual produced by the WRC will enable South African practitioners to meet the Department of Water Affairs’ and World Health Organization’s (WHO) requirements for WSPs. The WHO has proposed that WSPs be implemented for each country, which will ensure that a sustainable water supply system is implemented and managed thus minimizing the health risks to the consumer.

According to Dr Jo Burgess, WSPs aim to improve water quality assurance through a multi-barrier concept. The multiple barrier principle implies that actions are required at all stages in the process of producing and distributing water, in order to protect water quality. This includes source protection, treatment (when applied) through several different stages, prevention of contamination during distribution (piped or non-piped) and maintenance within households. The role of indicators is seen as primarily being a means of verification of the WSP in meeting water quality objectives, rather than as a routine tool for monitoring water quality.

A WSP provides an organized and structured system to minimize the chance of failure through oversight or management lapse. The process provides consistency with which safe water is supplied and provides contingency plans to respond to system failures or unforeseeable hazardous events. Water safety plans can be developed generically for small supplies rather than for individual supplies.

“With the use of WSPs the determination of whether the drinking water supply chain as a whole can deliver water of a quality that meets health-based targets will be achieved’ says Jo Burgess. “They also provide control measures in a drinking water system that will collectively control identified risks and ensure that health-based targets are met” she adds. Measures of operational monitoring, that ensure that deviation from the required performance is rapidly detected in a timely manner have been included. Management plans describing actions taken during normal operation or incident conditions and documenting the system assessment (including upgrade and improvement), monitoring and communication plans and supporting programmes also form part of the WSPs. They aim to provide guidance on both day-to-day actions and long term planning, collectively ensure the provision of safe water, and aid system managers and operators in gaining a better understanding of the water supply system and the risks that need to be managed. A comprehensive checklist has also been included to ensure the proper use and maintenance of a WSP.

Copies of the WSP manual can be obtained by contacting WRC publications (012 330 9016 or orders [at] wrc.org.za and requesting a copy of report number TT415/09).

Related web site: WHO – Water Safety Plans

Contact: Dr Jo Burgess, Research Manager KSA 3, WRC, South Africa, e-mail: job [at] wrc.org.za

Source: Source: Jo Burgess, WRC, 28 Sep 2009

Hygiene promotion: lessons from Save the Children’s programme in Malawi

When Save the Children launched its School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program in Mangochi, Malawi in 1998, only 42 percent of schools had access to clean water and none had hand-washing facilities. [...] Only 54 percent of schools had separate facilities for girls. In 2003, when Save the Children expanded its SHN program in Malawi to Balaka district, the situation was a marginally better than it had been in Mangochi five years before [and] as in Mangochi, no schools in Balaka had hand-washing facilities.

Qualitative surveys conducted in both districts also showed that before Save the Children’s SHN program:

• Students traveled long distances to fetch water, which often made them late [to class or] miss class altogether;
• Girls who traveled to collect water faced harassment from boys and men;
• Girls missed school when they were menstruating due to the lack of privacy in school latrines;
• Students drank from unprotected shallow wells and rivers;
• Students did not wash their hands after using the toilet because there were no hand-washing facilities; and
• Despite the availability of facilities, many children did not use them because they were locked or unhygienic

To increase access to and use of safe water and sanitation facilities, Save the Children worked with communities, schools, and water and sanitation experts to construct and rehabilitate boreholes, latrines, and hand-washing facilities and to train teachers and communities on hygiene.

Separate, ventilated latrines with doors and handwashing facilities nearby not only promote good hygiene but also enable girls to consistently attend school. Photo. Save the Children

[...] Quantitative and qualitative end line surveys conducted in Balaka and Mangochi district in 2006 and 2007 respectively showed that the presence of adequate water and sanitation facilities have had a tremendous impact on children’s lives and communities.

Despite these important achievements, the project encountered a number of challenges:

• Only 33 percent of the handwashing facilities in schools were functional and none had soap or ash. [...] When communities provide soap, it usually gets stolen. Just 41 percent of children report hand-washing after visiting the toilet and only 28 percent of children said that they used soap and water the last time they washed their hands.
• Community resource efforts were not consistent. In less active communities that did not provide sand, bricks and labor, latrines and hand-washing facilities were not constructed. However, among most communities that did provide resources, community participation helped create a sense of ownership and ensured the facilities were well-maintained.
• Community members sometimes vandalized handwashing facilities [and] school committees could not always afford to [...] fix facilities quickly. To minimize these incidents, Save the Children directed communities to report all instances of vandalism to the police.
• Rural shop owners did not regularly keep borehole parts in stock, so community members had to travel long distances to buy them.
• Water monitoring assistants conducted frequent supervision of the water point committees to ensure the committees and the boreholes functioned properly.
• Monitoring of hygiene education in schools was infrequent, as primary education advisors rarely monitored the teaching of hygiene. [...] Some teachers said they were not comfortable with the topic due to its sensitive nature and the use of words such as “defecation.”

While Save the Children’s SHN program saw tremendous progress in improving access to safe water and adequate latrines, hand-washing remained a low priority for schools and communities. Hand-washing facilities are not maintained and children rarely wash their hands with soap or ash. A targeted campaign around the importance of hand-washing is needed. Save the Children’s experience in Mangochi and Balaka districts illustrate the importance of community participation and ownership along with regular supervision.

[...] After approximately 20 years of programming and ten years supporting School Health and Nutrition in the district, Save the Children is phasing its programs out of Mangochi. Malawi’s Ministry of Education adopted most of Save the Children’s School Health and Nutrition activities when it began a nation SHN program in 2007. Unfortunately, the provision of water and sanitation facilities is expensive and the government will probably not be able to bare the full cost to equip all schools with adequate facilities.

Source: Save the Children (2008). Improving water, sanitation, and hygiene behaviors in schools : successes and lessons learned from Mangochi District, Malawi. 4 p. Download here