Community-Based Management Strategies in Sustainability of Rural Water Supply Schemes

Abstract

The sustainability of Rural Water Supply Schemes (RWSS), managed by communities, is a major concern in the developing world. A sustainable RWSS delivers safe and sufficient drinking water for a longer period to rural people. Community management was viewed as an accepted model that leads to sustainability, even though community management had difficulties and constraints in sustainability of RWSS due to social, technical, institutional and financial constraints. This paper reviews the sustainability factors of community managed RWSS. There is a need to take multi-stakeholder approach, a demand driven and community led approach, which ties these stakeholders like government, community and non-governmental sector for the effectiveness and sustainability of drinking water services. The synthesis evidenced that community management needs modifications, in terms of external factors, like, institutional support that include financial and technical support, trainings and administrative assistance to make RWSS sustainable. The community, like participation in all phases of planning, implementation, operation & maintenance, water tariff, sense of ownership, transparency, leadership and management are essential for the sustainability of RWSS. The participation by the community members in RWSS plays positive role for its sustainability. To conclude, analysis also highlighted commitment to community management should be pragmatic and rational. The scaling up of community management is an effective and efficient model to address the issues of sustainability in RWSS.