allAfrica.com: Uganda: Why Safe Water Plans in Country Choke (Page 1 of 2)

The provision of safe water to the population is one of the ways to not only curtail water related diseases, but also poverty levels. But the water service sector faces an uphill task in offering clean, safe and affordable water, writes Bamuturaki Musinguzi.

Although the meagre earnings from vending water have enabled 28-year-old Hasifa Nandawula barely cope with the high cost of living in the city of Kampala - the single mother's wish is to improve her income to support her three children.

Nandawula, a water vendor in Church Zone, Kisenyi II in Kampala Central is employed by the owner of a public water stand tap, where she sells water worth Shs5,000 per day and is paid Shs1,000 as her daily wage.

"The Shs1,000 I earn everyday is not enough," Nandawula said, quickly adding: "But I have nothing to do." "One time I was preparing breakfast meals where I made a profit of between Shs2,000 - 3,000. But because my customers reduced tremendously I can no longer supplement my income."

Left with no option, Nandawula took her children to her village home to reduce on the cost of feeding three extra mouths in the city but who would afford to attend school there.

"I decided to take my children to Kawolo village, Lugazi in Mukono district where they attend school. The eldest 14-year-old boy is in Primary 7 while the youngest who is eight years old, is in Primary 3. I always go there after a month to check on them."

Nandawula with three other single mothers rent a one-roomed house in Kisenyi at Shs20,000 per month with each contributing Shs5,000 per month. The other three mothers also decided to settle their children in their respective villages to avoid the costs of looking after them in the city.

Nandawula is among the hundreds of poor people in Kampala benefiting from the Urban Pro Poor project managed by the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC).

As a public utility NWSC has a mission to serve the poor. It has established the Urban Pro Poor branch that coordinates all the urban poor customers' activities; new connections, billing, collections and other innovative services to this segment.

This also includes water and sanitation, sustainable agriculture, advisory services and micro finance.

NWSC's definition of the poor is those households with incomes of less than Shs80,000 and in most cases earned on a day to day basis (piece meals), clustered settlements with high crowding index of 0.25 - 14 people per household, very low water consumption of between 0 - 20 litres per capita per day and customers who do not have their own connections and use mainly public water points.

The overall goal of the Urban Pro Poor programme is to provide improved access to piped water services to poor households living in slum areas of Kampala city, through provision of public water points and yard tap connections.

The central government represented by both the ministries of water and finance, maintains a performance contract with NWSC. In turn NWSC has developed a set of delegated area management contracts through which it monitors the performance of its 23 towns of operations or the water supply service areas.

The Urban Pro Poor programme has been met with a number of challenges. "There is a problem of land scarcity and ownership to allocate facilities," the Urban Pro Poor manager, J.B. Otema Adonga said.

"Urban communities are too complex and ever shifting thus hindering sustainability of the set up facilities and services," Adonga added. "Natural calamities like high water table, flooding and collapsing soils have disrupted the effective implementation of NWSC activities," Adonga said.

There is also bureaucracy of local government structures which affect service to the poor. "There is information gap between policy makers, service providers and local communities or beneficiaries in regard to water and sanitation service delivery to the urban poor."

Many of the beneficiaries have been disconnected by NWSC for failure to pay their water bills because of the poor incomes. According to the NWSC Project Manager, Eng. Paddy Twesigye, average sales on stand water points are Shs67,000 per month.

A vendor will only be left with Shs50,000 as his income after paying a monthly water bill of Shs20,000. The Shs50,000 is not enough to meet one's daily needs and therefore cannot be relied on as a livelihood and will therefore not provide quality service.

"The temptation not to remit the Shs20,000 water bill is high and that is why several have been disconnected. It is high risk to deal with the poor communities because after connecting them do you disconnect them and yet this service has to make economic sense. Do we provide free water to these communities like South Africa does? Our economy is not at that level," Twesigye said.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories