Skip to main content
TitlePerformance improvement planning : upgrading and improving urban water services
Publication TypeMiscellaneous
Year of Publication2008
AuthorsAgrawal, PC
Pagination15 p. : 2 boxes, 2 fig., 3 tab.
Date Published2008-04-01
PublisherWater and Sanitation Program - South Asia
Place PublishedNew Delhi, India
Keywordsaccounting, efficiency, financing, india, sanitation, sdiasi, sdiman, urban areas, water supply
Abstract

The water supply and sanitation sector in India continues to experience severe deficiencies in the availability, quality, and equity of services. Though access to infrastructure may be increasing in some cases, access to reliable, sustainable, and affordable water supply and sanitation services remains poor in general. Services remain deficient, with water available for only few hours a day; many remain unconnected to the network, and wastewater is disposed of without adequate treatment.
Consumers often spend large sums of money on expensive and unsafe alternatives to cope with poor services. While there are short-term procedural and technical solutions that providers can undertake to obtain immediate improvements in performance, these must be supported by institutional reform and adequate incentives for better management, operational autonomy, and improved accountability. Service providers can, through performance improvement plans, target the delivery of improved services by (a) applying the principles of customer orientation and financial viability; and (b) by stressing on operational efficiency and sustainable revenue strategies for improved and accountable services. Such plans focus on both the demand side in terms of maximizing water revenues, and on the supply side in terms of cost efficiency and cost recovery. These plans should be based on the basic principles of cost recovery, operational efficiency, and improved demand management. This overview paper examines in what way such improvements should be dealt with, to assure a certain guarantee that they remain sustainable in the short term as well as in the long run.

Custom 1822, 202.5

Locations

Disclaimer

The copyright of the documents on this site remains with the original publishers. The documents may therefore not be redistributed commercially without the permission of the original publishers.

Back to
the top