Village water committees: the disastrous policy that failed a continent

Village water committees: the disastrous policy that failed a continent

An astonishing 2020 report by Ecorys, discussing?Tanzania’s last 15 years of water sector investment has received no news, outrage or inquiry even though its findings are astounding. (Using Payment by Results to Improve the Sustainability of Rural Water Supply Services in Tanzania- Lessons learned from the DFID - funded programme in Tanzania (2014 - March 2019) March 2020)?The final reported finding involved Ecorys doing some remarkable field work with hundreds of enumerators acting as Data Verification Service Providers.?They went and visited handpumps and taps and found?that 33% of newly installed water points had water available 24/7.?This is?backed up by the World Bank’s Joint Monitoring Programme?in 2019 which said that only 43% of rural Tanzanians had access to basic water, and basic means a 30 minute walk to fetch water which some might say is below basic in the 21st century.?By June 2015 the total funds committed for this Water Sector Development Programme were $1.6 billion?(a lot came from the World Bank and many nations, DFID contributed $180 million), this is one of the largest water supply schemes in Africa, and it has failed, and there has been no inquiry, no outrage, no real lesson learning. ?The programme started in 2007 and 90% of the early budget was spent constructing 43,000 new water points – of which astonishingly?20% failed within the first year and no one thought of pulling the plug, or changing approach on the 5 year programme (World Bank 2017: High investments, low returns. Brief. Accessed at https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/923001519161501235/pdf/123624-REVISED-W17083.pdf?)?The approach was the same approach adopted in the 1980’s by virtually all African nations and it is vital for everyone, every single NGO, Government Water Minister, Permanent Secretary, Engineer, Local Government Water Dept, World Bank staffer, IFC bank roller, (ex) DFID, DANIDA, USAID WASH expert to actually stand up and say – wow, seriously this approach we all love has been a monumental governance and management issue?across Africa that has devastated millions of lives over the last 50 years and we can’t carry on.

No more minor adjustments,?a 180 degree turn around is needed, ?because after 50 years of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but getting?the same results signifies a group think collective madness across the sector.

Handing over millions of dollars to 181 Local Government Authorities and expecting District Water Engineers to train thousands of community water committees to maintain boreholes, pumps, overhead tanks, scaffold towers and thousands of km of pipes was thought of as a robust model – and the only solution is more training?and monitoring of the local committees.

The executive summary of the?2020 report says:

?“The systems installed were more complex or costly than local communities can sustain. Additionally, training for the community management groups has often been inadequate and there are limitations on post construction support and monitoring by the Local Government Agencies.” (World Bank 2017). ?

The exciting new innovation to make it work was something called?“Payments by Results”, so that for each functioning water point the Local Government received ￡300.?But the problem was the operational approach was never changed,?the model was a revamp of every failed water programme since the 1980’s. So even though the final output was supposed to be improved functionality, the first 4 years were spent “incentivising the improvement in monitoring and data systems. Before improvements in functionality could take place the foundations for institutional commitment to functionality and monitoring functionality needed to be established.” It feels very Alice in Wonderland and no wonder by 2019?“few” of the senior staff in the local government “were able to recall whether, from their understanding, there had been changes in the rates of functionality over time”

This was one of the largest rural water supply country programmes in Africa and give DFID credit for sending in Ecorys who did the hard slog of actually visiting large samples of villages to really see what was happening on the ground.

Public programmes genuinely attempt to work with communities but the evidence suggests that having a handful of men and women, sitting on water committees, expected to maintain?their village water system, whether a $2,000 handpump or a million dollar solar piped schemes has failed.?And really that’s not surprising, in no other sector would local, unqualified people be trained in technical maintenance, or book keeping or accountancy and expected to work for expenses only, and with very little oversight, or clear deliverables except “make it functional”.?What starts out as a nice idea ends up deteriorating when reality hits.?Less than 30% of water committees are described as “functional” according to the World Bank’s very thorough remote tracking database in Uganda. ?If there is no water committee, there is no water flowing. And yet across most countries in sub Saharan Africa this is the approach adopted by every national and local water department, NGO and even the big corporate players like the IFC fund billions of dollars through this operational governance. It really is quite staggering to read dry, insightful reports, that go nowhere, get lost in Whitehall?and Washington and no one thinks maybe there needs a complete, total rethink.

People?living in rural and urban Africa have been disenfranchised – they are not “beneficiaries” because they don’t benefit at all. 50% of all new water supply infrastructure installed breaks, and people are expected to be passive and grateful for the pointless effort made .?The focus is dogmatically on the construction of new water points, to deliver lots of beneficiary numbers?to nervous governments and to assuage tax payers who want to see Value for Money.?

The consequences of climate change for the billion without access to clean water are?profound. These people are at the sharp end of water scarcity and extreme events, the impact on them will be death, not expensive home insurance. Currently?

?At eWATERservices we believe that systematic change can only be catalysed when the consumer is the focus – right now the consumer is completely voiceless lost in a quagmire of global?management inefficiency.?The consumers only role is as the media poster child for donors web sites,?feel good funding drives, always passive, needy, dictated to.?Fragmented delivery, no oversight, billions of dollars poured into overwhelmingly disastrous programmes. .?When will it change??Why is there no public outcry? ?