Fredrick Masiga
18 September 2003
Kampala — Government plans to invite private players into the provision of water services, but will Ugandans get cheaper and better access?
Eighteen-year-old Rehema Tumwebaze assists her mother at a food kiosk in Katanga, a Kampala slum.
They use about 15 Jerrycans of water per day for the family business. At Shs 50 per 20-litre Jerrycan, their water bill is Shs 750 per day.
According to the National Water and Sewerage Corporation the recommended price for a 20-litre Jerrycan of water is Shs 14. But the reality is different. It goes for between shs 50 - 200 depending on the location.
Mr Sam Kawooya, a water vendor, in Katanga, sells about fifty Jerrycans of water per day between Shs 100 and Shs 200 -depending on the distance.
Kawooya and Tumwebaze's story is the case of the poor with less access to water, paying more than the rich.
Katanga has about four water taps and one spring well for over 10,000 residents, according to one local authority.
Yet the residences of the affluent, with greater access, pay the official rate of Shs 14 per jerrycan per 20 litres.
Peri-urban residents depend on water standpoints, whose attendants charge exorbitant fees.
NWSC has 66,000 active water connections in the country, far less than the desired 200,000 to achieve 100 percent connectivity by 2015. NWSC collects about $17 million from the current 66,000 connections.
Mr Charles Odonga, NWSC's chief manager of engineering services, says the corporation aims to "encourage private participation," but this is the centre of controversy.
Private participation
Mr David Ssebabi, the team leader, at the Privatisation and Utility Sector Reform Project, said that under the 'Private Sector Participation' programme, "a private operator would be contracted under a lease arrangement." This awaits cabinet approval of the PU white paper on the privatisation of water.
"No body is selling anything. 'Privatisation' is a misleading notion," he said.
The Minister for Water, Lands and Environment, Col. Kahinda Otafiire, indeed says there is actually nothing to privatise.
"How do I privatise what I don't have?" he told reporters in Kampala, September 12. He dismissed such plans as "having priorities upside-down."
To him, provision of water in poor countries is a government obligation that cannot be privatised.
The PU has however completed a water divestiture study that paints a grim picture of the sector.
According to this study, despite huge donor and government funding, NW&SC cannot make profit, unless it addresses critical issues including managerial inefficiency.
The study recommends that water services be leased out to private operators while local governments should be allowed to play a bigger role in their localities.
This seems to concur with a plan by government to place all small town water systems under private sector management contracts by March 2005."
By moving towards placing water into private hands, Uganda is walking a path that few countries have attempted.
The latest UNDP Human Development Report says privatisation of water and sanitation services has been possible in highly urbanised centers because of the profit motive.
Private companies are unlikely to be interested in providing similar services in rural areas of low-income countries because rural areas are generally considered unprofitable.
The price
Typically, the involvement of the private sector means more people have access to water, but that water costs more, World Bank's Michael Klein told BBC News Online.
Prof. Jassy Kwesiga, the executive director of DENIVA, agrees: "Water is not a good profit making venture so those who go into it tend to increase the price to survive."
The infrastructure for a good water system is very expensive to establish and yet no investor wants to go into such investment if there is no free hand at pricing. The poor who already find water expensive will find it "double expensive" when it is privatised.
Otafiire agrees that water services should not be given to private operators because "Private businesses are driven by profit and cannot be entrusted with offering a basic right like water,"
Industry players point to successful private sector stories here in Uganda to make the case for privatisation.
NWSC hired ONDEO, a private management firm, to collect revenue in Kampala and results have been good with the realisation of $17million annually.
Countries have used different approaches. According to UNDP, South Africa has been able to reduce the number of people unable to access safe water by "determined top-level political support."
First, government guarantees 6,000 litres of water to each household free of charge, every month, through cross subsidies from wealthy households. Government also devolved responsibility to local governments by allowing them to control water projects.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2003 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
