Is the water still flowing in Nepal?

The tapstand in Sulikhola

Credit: WaterAid

The tapstand in the village of Sulikhola in central Nepal was installed by WaterAid and its partner Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH) in 1991.

WaterAid and NEWAH withdrew from the village then, but the tapstand is still functioning well, providing safe, clean drinking water for the villagers. Its continued success is due to the community's Project Management Committee, trained by WaterAid and NEWAH in maintenance skills.

The project there is even turning a tidy profit, which is enabling the committee to finance other essential development work in the village. By collecting Rps 60 (50p) each year from each household using the drinking water the committee has increased the project maintenance fund from Rps 80,000 (£1150) in 1990 to Rps 200,000 (£1680) today.

The committee is now using these funds to employ a caretaker to maintain the water supply system, to issue small loans to community members and has also made a contribution of Rps 20,000 (£160) to the construction of the local school.

The success story of Sulikhola came to light as a result of WaterAid and NEWAH's Looking Back Study, which started in 2001. WaterAid started working in Nepal in 1987, so many of our water and sanitation projects there are now over 10 years old. WaterAid and NEWAH began the study to find out how these older projects are standing up to the test of time.

For us the issue of sustainability is critical. If WaterAid is to achieve its vision of access to water and sanitation for all our projects must continue to function for many years. The lessons we learn from looking back at projects will help us to improve the design of projects we support in the future.

When we find a project in need of support we work with the community to design a programme to strengthen and improve it to ensure that it continues to function long into the future. We are sharing our findings with other organisations in Nepal and other WaterAid country programmes in the hope that they too can learn from our experiences.

Over the past year teams of NEWAH staff have been visiting project communities to collect data from the tap and tubewell users, test the water quality and take photographs. At the end of each visit there is a community meeting where NEWAH gives feedback on the findings of their visit and discuss with the community how to improve the management of the project.

So far we have visited 49 projects implemented between 1987 and 1998 (about 10% of the total), some in the hills and others in the terai plains in the south of the country. These projects contained 332 tap stands in the hills and 646 hand pumps in the terai. Through the study we are collecting a great deal of information, however the bottom line is: "Is the water still flowing?"

The chart above shows that in total over 80% of water points are still functioning. Half are functioning to design specification - this means that they are functioning as well as on the day they were constructed.

Around a third are functioning but require attention - this means that water is flowing but that some sort of maintenance is required. Around a sixth of projects are not functioning - no water is flowing from the taps and tubewells.

Why have some of the projects fallen into disrepair?

A handpump in Beluwa.

Credit: WaterAid

We believe that for projects to be sustainable communities must take responsibility for managing the operation and maintenance of the project, as the community of Sulikhola has.

This includes activities like regularly cleaning the area around the water points, raising money from users to pay for repairs, employing a caretaker to undertake regular maintenance and calling in outside help when the community is unable to resolve a problem such as damage caused by a landslide.

During the implementation of projects WaterAid and NEWAH help the communities to set up and train a Project Management Committee (PMC) to carry out these responsibilities. Through the study we are now finding out how active these committees have remained over time by recording the number of times the committee has met in the last 12 months.

The results, presented in the chart below, show a wide range in the frequency of PMC meetings - some PMCs meet regularly while others appear to have stopped holding meetings.

What can we learn for the future?

It is clear that PMCs are not active in terai projects. Based on these findings we are carrying out further research into the causes and will design a new approach to community management in the terai. We will pilot these new approaches in our projects in the coming year.

The approach to community management of hill projects appears to be appropriate, however over time many committee members have left and committees become inactive. NEWAH is planning to hold refresher training for these PMCs this year in an attempt to revive the committees. It is important to revive the inactive committees as there is a clear correlation between inactive committees and water projects that have fallen into disrepair.

By tailoring our approach and including refresher training we are confident that success rates will be higher in the future, meaning more communities like Sulikhola's will enjoy safe, clean water for years to come.