Community water supply for the urban poor in developing countries: The case of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Akbar, Heydari; Minnery, John; Horen, Basil van; Smith, Phil

doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2006.03.001

Cited by 41 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…This proposition is supported by a more recent evaluation of four pro-poor urban water supply projects funded by the World Bank in three African countries, which found out that there were more effective pro-poor outcomes in projects where there were higher levels of community participation, starting right from project inception, design, construction, O&M, and monitoring/evaluation (Uwejamomere & Northover 2012). An earlier study carried out in Dhaka, Bangladesh came up with similar findings, and further highlighted the importance of a sense of community ownership of the water supply scheme as a strong antecedent to community participation (Akbar et al 2007). …”

Section: Involving Communities In Wspssupporting

confidence: 57%

Effective water safety management of piped water networks in low-income urban settlements

Kayaga

2013

Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development

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Spiralling low-income settlements are a big challenge to urban water utilities of developing countries. To extend and maintain water services to these settlements, urban water utilities need to develop innovative solutions for overcoming various physical/technical, institutional, structural/legal and financial/economic constraints associated with these informal areas. This paper draws from documented pilot projects of implementing community-managed Water Safety Plans (WSPs) in various developing countries, and synthesises necessary ingredients for effective implementation of WSPs in low-income urban settlements. Urban water utilities need to partner with community members, but the former should keep a facilitating/overseeing role, given the overly technical nature of WSPs. The terms of the partnership should be mutually agreed and well documented; the utility should allow full participation of the relevant community members in the overall Operation and Maintenance (O&M) plan for the low-income settlement, in order to enhance community ownership of the water supply system, and continuously develop the capacity of relevant community members.The relevant community members should be facilitated, through participatory approaches, to develop bespoke community-based WSPs along with simple monitoring tools. Implementing community-managed WSPs will be easier and more effective if O&M systems and community management approaches are already institutionalised within the water utility.Keywords | community participation, low-income urban settlements, operation and maintenance, piped water supply system, water safety management

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Section: Involving Communities In Wspssupporting

confidence: 57%

Effective water safety management of piped water networks in low-income urban settlements

Kayaga

2013

Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development

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“…This leads to an overflow of waste water, muddy and flooded conditions, and the scattered disposal of solid waste, escalating exposure to illness and the widespread menace of mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects (Rashid 2009;Hanchett et al 2003;Chowdhury and Amin 2006;Rahman et al 2010;. The urban poor's exclusion from services and infrastructure goes beyond physical availability, and extends to political, institutional and economic factors (Akbar et al 2007). These include laws prohibiting service providers from delivering services to households lacking a land holding number, 71 NGOs' unwillingness to invest in bustees under threat of eviction, poor coordination among government departments and service providers, and institutional incapacity, with urban local governments having an unrealistic set of functions within tight funding constraints (Matin 1999;Akbar et al 2007;Banks 2008;Ghafur 2000).…”

Section: Services and The Physical Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drawing on their political affiliation, powerful businessmen in the bustee tap into water supplies and negotiate with water officials to ensure ongoing supplies, 74 distributing these services at high prices to busteebashees, in the process creating a multi-tiered system of dependency (Baumgart et al 2011;. Estimates suggest that busteebashees pay the equivalent of 10 to 15 times the unit cost of piped water through these informal channels (Akbar et al 2007;Baumgart et al 2011;Rana 2011). 75 Similarly, mastaans connect rooms to illegal supplies and charge high monthly fees.…”

Section: Services and The Physical Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Likewise, other NGO programmes have also met these problems in Bangladesh. Where initiatives to improve water supplies in bustees met resistance from mastaans because they challenged the control and incomes from existing systems, one NGO described how strong community mobilisation and resistance through capacity building overcame this (Matin 1999;Akbar et al 2007). 118 It is also important to learn from the dark sides of these experiences.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Urban Poverty in Bangladesh: Causes, Consequences and Coping Strategies

Banks

2012

SSRN Journal

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BWPI Working Paper 178Creating and sharing knowledge to help end poverty www.manchester.ac.uk/ overty in Bangladesh: causes, strategies 8Creating and sharing knowledge to help end poverty www.manchester.ac.uk/bwpi 2 AbstractBustees are places where physical, social, economic and political vulnerabilities collide, creating a multi-layered blanket of vulnerability for their residents. Although income is central to day-to-day survival in an urban environment in which cash income is needed to meet a household's basic needs, work options are limited to low-paid and irregular work, primarily dependent on physical labour. This forces households to rely upon loans and labour mobilisation strategies to get by. Unsanitary, poorly serviced, and densely populated environmentsfrequently situated in environmentally hazardous areas -mean ill health is both endemic and chronic, playing a routine and devastating role in the lives of the urban poor. The repercussions of resource scarcity at the household level are compounded by the social and political exclusion of the poor from urban governance structures and processes. Amidst a lack of formal institutional support, and in the absence of formal rights and entitlements, the process of facilitating and maintaining patron-client relationships is a central coping strategy for the urban poor. It is a means of trying to manage uncertainty and improve their access to resources. For the majority, however, these strategies are limited to helping households to cope, rather than advancing their interests. Informal systems of governance at the bustee level reproduce and exacerbate existing inequalities, with access to power, information, resources, employment and other lucrative income-generating opportunities limited to a close circle of wellconnected bustee households.

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“…The proportion of women with secondary or postsecondary education is higher in peri-urban and urban areas than in rural areas. Women's literacy level has been shown to affect their access to information related to development issues (Akbar et al, 2007) and their participation in community management of water (Were et al, 2006). In the absence of clearly defined and enforced pro-poor efforts, interventions to increase access to water are likely to marginalize women with little or no education.…”

Section: Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water accessibility and womens participation along the rural-urban gradient: A study in Lake Victoria Region, Kenya

Nzengya¹

2013

J. Geogr. Reg. Plann.

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Small towns and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are emerging as hotspots of population growth. This paper considers the case of the small but rapidly growing town of Bondo in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya, and its surrounding peri-urban and rural settlements. The study objectives are to examine: a) alternative indicators of households' accessibility to improved water sources along the urban-rural gradient; b) households' water collection and storage practices; and c) women's involvement in community-level efforts to improve water-service provision. Data were collected through interviews of 307 women from urban, peri-urban and rural settlements in 2011. By studying different kinds of settlements in the same geographical region, the paper shows how each kind has its own unique characteristics and development needs. Results show that peri-urban settlements are not just an intermediate space between the rural and the urban; instead, these settlements pose very different kinds of challenges than those of their rural and urban counterparts. Despite efforts by donor and government agencies to promote participation among women, study results indicate that women participate only marginally, with lowest participation observed among women from peri-urban areas. Innovative ways that agencies can engage more women to improve water service are discussed.

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Community water supply for the urban poor in developing countries: The case of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Cited by 41 publications

References 3 publications

Effective water safety management of piped water networks in low-income urban settlements

Effective water safety management of piped water networks in low-income urban settlements

Urban Poverty in Bangladesh: Causes, Consequences and Coping Strategies

Water accessibility and womens participation along the rural-urban gradient: A study in Lake Victoria Region, Kenya

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