The Impacts of Rural Water Supply and Management System on Livelihood of User Communities: A case of Babile Woreda, East Hararge Zone
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Date
2008-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Knowledge of the impacts of rural water supply and management on the livelihood of
the user community can help in improving the future impacts of rural water supply.
Thus, the objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of rural water supply and
management systems on the livelihood of the user community in Babile Woreda, East
Hararge Zone.
The data sources for the study were both primary and secondary. For secondary data
collection document review was used as a tool to collect valuable information. Focus
group discussion, household surveys, observation method and key-informants
interview were used for primary data collection. Three stage sampling method was
used for primary data collection. For the selection of kebele administration stratified
sampling method was used based on agro-climatic zone. Two kebele administrations
were selected from kola and one from Woina dega agro-climatic zone. Purposive
sampling method was used for villages/communities selection and simple random
sampling method was employed for households' selection. House hold survey was
conducted in three selected kebele administrations and 90 heads of house hold were
randomly drawn from the total 900 water supply user heads of house hold. Three
focus group discussions were held with water committee members, elders, health
extension workers, development agents and kebele administration officials and four
observations were conducted at different water points. For data analysis a
combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was employed. The method used
for data analysis was simple description: like percentage, average and tabulation.
The study revealed that weak institutional capacity, poor water supply scheme and financial
management and there was weak linkage between water committees and Woreda Water
Office were identified as short comings of the study area. The household survey also
showed that, the livelihood of the user communities in the study areas have been
improved after they have started to use improved water supply. The improvements in
livelihood were manifested through improvement in health and time saving in all the
surveyed communities. Whereas 35.6 % of the respondents said, the improved water
supply has improved the income of households in terms of opening possibilities for
small scale production and livestock watering but about 64.4% of the respondents
said no improvement in income after they started to use improved water supply. The
implication of reduction in time spent on water collection could mean more time for
income generating activities, food production, childcare and health. The study also
revealed that the linkage between impacts of water supply and management on the
livelihood of the user communities. The better the management of rural water supply
indicated that the better was the improvement in benefits of improved water supply.
The evidence in the study area indicates that poorly managed water supply scheme
has adversely affected the livelihood of the user community, especially in those study
areas where water supply schemes interruption was with high frequency. The policy
implication of the study is strengthening of the institutional capacity at local level in
order to improve the rural water supply scheme management and impacts of rural
water supply on the livelihood of the user community.
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Keywords
Rural Water Supply