Utility partnerships, water utilities and Non-government organisations (NGOs) present technical and structural approaches

The poorest sections of the population in cities are not reached by the water utilities in many partner countries. They cannot afford a house connection or they live in informal settlements where the water utilities have no service area.

As a result, low-income people in particular often pay higher water prices than wealthier people, as they buy their water from informal vendors at high prices.

At the network meeting of the Utility Platform in Dresden in April 2024, participants learned about different approaches how Water Utility Partnerships can also help to supply people in poorer neighbourhoods with water.

SDG 6, the Sustainable Development Goal on water and sanitation, stipulates that all people should have access to drinking water and sanitation. The 2030 Agenda, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, aims to ‘leave no one behind’ and therefore also focuses on particularly disadvantaged population groups.

GWOPA, the Global Water Operators’ Partnerships Alliance, has been focusing on the Leave no One Behind issue for some time now, as Franziska Volk explained in her presentation. They have established a Community of practice to exchange knowledge between different WOPs and practitioners.

One good example from the GWOPA cosmos, is the water utility Ghana Water Company Ltd. in Ghana (GWCL). It has succeeded in structurally anchoring the issue through an operator partnership. With international support, an employee initially focussed on people with low incomes. Over a period of ten years, an entire department has now taken care of the special needs of people in poorer neighbourhoods. They now reach over 12,000 poorer households with over 750,000 people.  (Full story: The Impact of a WOP in Serving Low-Income Urban Communities in Ghana - GWOPA). Leave no one Behind must therefore be anchored in the organisations so that it remains an issue in the long term.

Diese Erfahrung hat auch die englische NGO Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) in Dhaka, Bangladesch gemacht. Die NGO hat sich darauf spezialisiert, die Wasserversorgung für die ärmere Bevölkerung in Städten zu verbessern und arbeitet dafür mit unterschiedlichen lokalen Akteuren zusammen. Gertrude Salano aus Kenia berichtete über WSUPs Erfahrungen mit der Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority in Bangladesch. Diese hat eine Einheit für einkommensschwache Kunden gegründet und konnte so 500.000 zusätzliche Menschen erreichen, die vorher keinen Zugang zu Wasser- und Sanitärversorgung hatten. In Kenia konnte der nationale Wasserregulierer auch durch Lobbying von WSUP bereits vor knapp 10 Jahren überzeugt werden, einen Performance-Indikator von Wasserversorgern aufzunehmen, der die Dienstleistungen für die Armen misst und damit das Thema strukturell verankert.

This has also been the experience of the English NGO Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Gertrude Salano from Kenya reported in her input thatWSUP specialises in improving the water supply for the poorer population in cities and works together with various local stakeholders to achieve this.  

It has set up a unit for low-income customers and was thus able to reach 500,000 additional people who previously had no access to water and sanitation. In Kenya, the national water regulator was also persuaded by WSUP lobbying almost 10 years ago to include a performance indicator for water suppliers that measures services for the poor, thereby structurally anchoring the issue.

This is not only done out of altruism, because when people have affordable access to water, they do not have to illegally tap water pipes, which in turn leads to water losses and costly repairs on the part of the water utilities. GWCL Accra from Ghana is now passing on its experience in a South-South WOP to a water supplier in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

The Zambian water supplier Lukanga Water and Sanitation Company (LgWSC) is currently trialling the technical options for providing people in informal settlements with access to water with the support of an operator partnership with the Netherlands. Nicholas Mwape, Engineer and Technical Operations Manager at LgWSC, explained the use of pre-paid water meters. This allows people to buy only the amount of water they can afford. The water suppliers save themselves unpaid bills and people also budget better if they pay for the water in advance. However, this approach is not necessarily transferable to other water companies and locations.
Magige Marwa, Director for Water Supply and Sanitation Management, from KUWASA, the water supplier for Kahama Municipality in Tanzania, criticised the high costs, especially for the materials for the pre-paid water meters, which not all water suppliers can afford. In Tanzania, the use of prepaid water meters for individual connections is at slow pace due to high cost of investment as well as operation and maintenance. KUWASA supplies potable water to various customers’ categories including traditional water kiosks where people can buy water at an affordable price. However, these are also a cost factor for the water suppliers, as a salesperson is needed for the water. KUWASA has at least 107 water kiosks but only a few of them are operational. On this category, KUWASA selected few points as prepaid centers, using prepaid meters from local manufacturers, but vandalism on prepaid meters is very high.

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Further information and all presentations of the session can be found in the documentation of the 7th network meeting of the operator platform.