Month: Feb 2014

Changing the whole system to provide water, sanitation and hygiene services that last

water services that last

By Patrick Moriarty and Harold Lockwood –

For the last six years or so, primarily through our WASHCost and Triple-S initiatives, IRC has engaged deeply with the challenges of what it takes to provide sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene services. We think that we’ve identified many parts of the puzzle (and so have many others working in the same direction – we’re keenly aware that we’re not the only show in town) and we’ve been sharing these regularly through our websites, papers and blogs. But, what does it take for these piecemeal findings to be taken up and to lead to wholesale change: ensuring that the post-MDG goals of universal access with sustainable WASH services can be achieved by 2030?

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Where do you throw your dirt?

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Watara Sackor (Min. Public Works / National WASH Committee), Pinky E. White (Min. Health) and James Kokro (Min. of Health / National WASH Committee) head off to interview residents of the Fiamah area of Monrovia.

So I’m in Monrovia this week running a 4 day writing course for twenty staff from across a dozen ministries and government organisations who will be working together to produce the 2014 Sector Performance Report (SPR).  Today we did some fieldwork – the group split into three and each visited a community in or near Monrovia.

We wanted to collect some data to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of data collection, presentation and analysis. The first challenge came yesterday when I asked the group to agree on three questions, which would asked to at least 20 people at each visit site.

The first question to be agreed on was “Where do you get your drinking water?”. Pretty straight forward, except that this morning when I wrote up the questions I accidentally wrote “Where do you get your water?”.   The consequence was interesting – one team asked about “water” rather than “drinking water” and they were the only ones where some of the respondents gave multiple answers: “Sometimes we get our water from the handpump, sometimes from the well, sometimes from the pipeline” said one woman, interviewed by Watara Sackor, from the Ministry of Public Works.

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The performance of piped water systems versus handpumps in growing rural growth centres (2500 to 7500 people)

water services that last

By  Dr. Christelle Pezon, IRC

Piped water systems provide a better service than handpumps, at a lower cost. This conclusion is derived from the in-depth study of the water provision in four rural growth centres (2500 to 7500 people), in Sahel, the poorest region of Burkina Faso (Pezon, 2013).

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Who serves the in-betweeners?

water services that last

By: Marieke Adank, IRC

Small towns and peri-urban areas are by definition found in the grey area in between the truly urban and the truly rural. Also in terms of water supply, fifty shades of grey are found in these types of settlements. People living here often fall in between the cracks of urban utilities and rural water committees. Their water supplies have characteristics of both these service delivery models – though not necessarily the best of those two worlds.

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India rural water supply: an orphan of reforms?

water services that last

By V. Kurian Baby, India Country Director, IRC

Community rural water supply (RWS) in India is an orphan of partially implemented demand responsive sector reforms on the one hand and unsuccessful decentralisation on the other. Historically, rural water supply in India has been outside the sphere of governments (NRDWP 2013). The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendment (Act 1992) made drinking water and sanitation a constitutional mandate of the three tier system of Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs). Even after two decades, the decentralisation process is an unaccomplished dream lying between de-concentration and devolution. In many states the progress is either stalled or reversed.

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