Community involvement in financing and maintaining water facilities

In this week's post I will just attempt to highlight two interesting points of  a research on water supply services in Rwanda and Uganda by Golooba-Mutebi.

Who pays for water facilities and how?
The research reports difficulty in collecting money in Ugandian local communities to finance the construction of water sources. The solution has been asking for other types of contribution, such as materials, free labour force, accommodation and food for technicians.
It might be seen as a more feasible strategy to ensure financial sustainability of water facilities, by taking into consideration the real resources which communities can offer in exchange.
However, the question whether communities (instead of state administrations) should be responsible for financing water sources remains open. It might be argued that this solution can increase the communities' sense of ownership of facilities, a crucial issue I have mentioned in my last post.

Who maintains water facilities?
Golooba-Mutebi highlights the relation between lack enforcement mechanisms in water facilities maintenance operated by local communities and their ineffective management.
The author suggests that assigning a definite role to one individual, rather than transferring maintenance responsibilities to the whole community, might be more distant from the theoretical principle of public participation, but has proven to be more effective.
Therefore, a cause for reflection could be thinking if participation in water facilities maintenance implies the indistinct attribution of responsibilities to the community, or if it entails the involvement of locals in finding agreed solutions on how to manage them (including the choice of who is responsible for maintenance).

I hope to further explore these themes in the next posts.
Thanks again for reading this last post, and feel free to correct and comment it!



References:

Golooba-Mutebi F. (2012). ‘In search of the right formula: public, private and community-driven provision of safe water in Rwanda and Uganda’, Public Administration and Development 32 (4-5): 430–443.