Community management of rural water supplies

During the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, donors and governments wanted to build new water schemes that would serve the maximum number of people. This ambitious construction target proved to be a failure because of its unsustainability. In some African countries, almost 60 per cent of rural water supply systems have either completely broken down, or are not operating anywhere near their intended capacity. This paper examines the various aspects of community-managed water supplies in an Ethiopian community where the author was involved in a rural water supply project. He explains the idea of community management and presents a case study involving the village of Dulecha. The author emphasizes the need for a democratically elected water committee, adequate training, an affordable but realistic tariff structure, the availability of appropriate tools, reasonably priced and locally available spare parts, and the importance of guidelines for the construction and management of rural water supply systems.