| dc.description.abstract | Introduction: Uganda's domestic water policy calls for sustainable provision of safe water within easy reach, and based on management responsibility and ownership by users with effective use and functionality of the water facilities. This is in-line with the Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG 7) which has a target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. The achievement of this goal is on track, but rural areas in developing countries across the world continue to remain severely disadvantaged with 780 million people not having access to an improved water supply. The challenge to rural water sustainability is highly recognized but it is jeopardizing the county's vision and the MDG achievements for safe water. For example only 2 out of 3 hand pumps installed in developing countries are working at a given point in time (RWSN 2010).
Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the management processes influencing functionality of rural water facilities in Koro sub-county, Gulu district, as no such study has been carried out before. The study aimed at establishing, the compliance level of water agencies to rural supply management guidelines, the capacity of water source committees and hand pump mechanics to manage safe water facilities, and level of contribution of water users towards functionality of rural water facilities.
Method: This was a cross sectional study that involved 191 respondents who included water users, water user committees, and hand pump mechanics and water supply agencies. A total of 36 water sources were sampled comprising of 28 boreholes, 6 shallow wells and 2 protected springs. Data was collected by trained research assistants then entered in Epidata and exported to SPSS v16 for statistical analysis. The Pearson Chi-squared test was used to determine association between independent and the dependent variables. In all analysis, significance level of less than 5% was considered.
Results: Boreholes had a functionality rate of 73.2%, and shallow wells a functionality rate of 83.3%, while protected springs had a functionality of 100%.
The study shows that water users were contributing actively towards functionality of the water facility. 71.1% willing paid water user fees, 84.2%, selected water source committees, 89.4%, had set rules and regulations and 92.1% had attended meetings on management of water facilities. However 28.9% of water users were unwilling to pay water user fees and sited issues like lack of transparency and accountability
In regards to the capacity of water source committees the findings show that 66.6% collect water user fees, 83.4% organize community meeting to address issues of water facilities, 88.9% mobilized community for routine cleaning, 89.9% reported defects on water facilities and 53.8% paid hand pump mechanics whenever they repaired water facilities. Loss of moral with time, lack of leadership skills, migration to other villages especially women when they are married, death and lack of refresher trainings were noted as gaps affecting performance of WSC.
The ability of the hand pump mechanics to carry out maintenance is highly compromised by lack of skills in some key approaches especially fishing out fallen pipes and replacing plastic pipes. This is made worse by lack of tools as it was reported that only two tool kits are available for 6 hand pump mechanics. Water supply agencies are hardly complying with their mandate of providing support to community based service providers and often lack capabilities especially resources to perform this obligation
Conclusion: To ensure that water sources continue to function, service providers, and water users need to be supported externally especially by local governments. For local governments to carry out their responsibilities as indicated in the guidelines they need to strengthen in terms of resources and capabilities otherwise indicators for measuring compliance of water supply agencies as regards to rural water supply need to be revised in the current existing water policies, operation and maintenance framework.
Recommendations: The researcher recommends that there is need to; explore or develop accounting systems and ask community to adopt village savings and loan association (V SLA) or use sub county account to keep collected funds, equip care takers with skills, tools and equipment for maintenance, provide a monthly/ allowance for WSC/HPM, regularly reselect and train WSC, preferable after every 2 years, and make operations of WSC legal or formal, so that it is easy to monitor and control their work | en_US |
