By Gram Vikas Posted on Tue 18 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

This is a very interesting project in that it bridges community with local governance in its water delivery and managment structure.

What do you anticipate as the stakes of the Water User Associations? Who sets their monetary compensation ? How do you prevent them from being biased, without foregoing the users' voice? How do they partner with the Water Board and Assembly?

Machinjiri/Nkolokoti Peri-Urban Community Water and Sanitation

By Water for People Posted on Tue 18 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

Malawi has not yet formalized Water User Associations as legal entities, but there is currently a movement to get these into place. As such, Water For People--Malawi is partnering with the Blantyre Water Board and the Blantyre District Assembly to get sound model Water User Associations into place that can provide a concept example so that they can eventually be formalized throughout the country. These pilot WUAs will have a formal set of rules and regulations determined in partnership with the BWB and BDA that will be agreed to in order to limit the stakes as well as any biases. It will be up to the BWB and BDA to monitor these new WUAs to ensure that they abide by these regulations. The Blantyre Water Board will be responsible for determining the monetary compensation for the tariffs as well as the kiosk managers. These are standards that are set by the BWB across the board.

Review of Proposal

By East Meets West Foundation Posted on Tue 18 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

Institutional arrangements / Experience of Planning and Management Unit:

The agency that currently provides services to the legalized areas is the Blantyre Water Board. Services to unplanned areas are provided sporadically. A thorough description of institutional arrangements legal context (e.g., access to land and formal government services) is given. Is it possible to privatize the proposed system management to help deal with the the following typical problems that might be encountered:
• Poor services from the Water Board (e.g., slow response times to reported faults, requests for new kiosk connections, poor water quality, intermittent service, low pressure, etc.);
• Irregular billing periods and meter readings (including bills arriving less frequently than monthly, frequent use of meter consumption estimates in place of actual readings, faulty meters, water theft (trickling), and meters recording pressurized air flow (rather than water flow) as billable consumption); and
• High risk of vandalism on kiosks and pipes (which may not promptly repaired by the Water Board, leading to supply shortages at kiosks and customers being diverted to the “free” supply of leaking water).

Private managers are less likely to tolerate such problems, as they would cut into profits. Similarly, although this was not mentioned per se, but if there are problems with non-payment by users, this is usually much more readily dealt with by private sector management. What is the response by the Water Board to non-payers? Are they cut-off from services?

Existing Water Supply and Sanitation Services: Leal areas have good service. Illegal areas have scattered service to some areas. However, “in many cases service is inadequate to meet community needs”. The proposed infrastructure would mainly provide services to the illegal areas where services are minimal or absent altogether. There is a clear demand for improved services at the proposed site.

Engineering Design Issues
• 125 persons per tap seems reasonable as that is about 25 families. Will tap users pay? If not, who will pay for O&M?
• There does not appear to be any initial assessment of the proposed raw water source, although it does say that water quality will be tested annually. The proposed source should be first tested and meet government WQ standards. At least the raw water quality should be able to be treated to meet those standards as a pre-condition for providing BPR funding.
Capital Investment Costs and Financing
• Capital Investment Cost - $30,875 (proposed) from BPR, supplemented with a very modest $2,500 in local co-financing from “communities”. Does this mean local government, or beneficiary contributions? Is that in cash or in-kind? What about beneficiary contributions (see below)?
• For the piped water users, O&M costs are estimated to be only $808 per YEAR. For similar sized (number of beneficiaries) pumped treated water systems in Vietnam, the monthly O&M cost is about $250 per MONTH. Is this $808 a reasonable estimate?
• Will tap users pay? If not, who will pay for O&M for the public taps?

O&M and Financial Sustainability:
How will the BPR beneficiary ensure that there will be:
• Co-financing (cash and in-kind) by local government (cash) and beneficiaries (cash and in-kind services such as digging the pipe line trenches)?
• Customer willingness and ability to co-pay capital investment cost;
• Customer willingness and ability to pay for water tariffs;
• Who will provide operation, maintenance, repair and replacement technical support?
• Are all necessary parts and materials readily available at reasonable prices from local providers? (I assume so, as it is apparently right outside the capital city).
• Who will establish (and adjust from time to time) the water tariffs?
• Are there qualified local private technicians (or possibly Water Board staff moon-lighting) who can and will be willing to provide technical support services as required? Presumably yes, as it is near the capital city.

Cheers, Rick McGowan

Review of Proposal

By Water for People Posted on Wed 19 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

Hi Rick,
Thanks for your thorough analysis. Please find responses to your questions directly from our field director below.

Institutional Arrangements / Experience of Planning and Management Unit:

The agency that currently provides services to the legalized areas is the Blantyre Water Board. Services to unplanned areas are provided sporadically. A thorough description of institutional arrangements legal context (e.g., access to land and formal government services) is given. Is it possible to privatize the proposed system management to help deal with the following typical problems that might be encountered:

ANSWER: No, beacuse this is not independent of the Blantyre Water Board system, which is the only body mandated to supply potable water in Blantyre and the peri-urban areas of Blantyre. So the water will still come from Blantyre Water Board (BWB). There are plans to do some reforms within the Blantyre Water Board, but its not yet clear whether it will be privatised or not. Privatisation is one of the options, but most civil organisations are already not comfortable with privatisation.

Here is a brief description of what will happen.

BWB has a very big system (though very old) that supplies water to Blantyre city, peri-urban areas of Blantyre, and other districts near Blantyre.
The system was built more than 50 years ago and is therefore a very old system designed to serve fewer people than it is serving now.

In Blantyre we have 2 types of settlements:
1-Planned areas - where people with a reasonable income stay, have better facilities, can access by cars

2-Unplanned areas - where most low-income people stay, have limited or no facilities, difficult to access by car, congested (high population density)

In the unplanned areas water supply is mostly communal through water kiosks unlike in the planned areas where people have household individual connections. There are some households with individual connections in the unplanned areas but these are few.

Those with individual connections are those that are better off and can afford to pay for the connection fee charged by the Blantyre Water Board. These are households with some land and also accessible by car.

Sometimes these individuals do sell water to those that do not have a household connection, but at a rate higher than that is recommended by BWB, MK4/20L bucket instead of MK2/20L bucket (MK= Malawi Kwacha).

PROPOSED STRUCTURE FOR KIOSK MANAGEMENT
- Form Water User Associations that manage a number of kiosks with a Board of Trustees (Paid Honorarium)
- Have a secretariat with an office, paid staff, a bookeeper for a number of kiosks, an adminstrator, and kiosk attendants who sell water daily (full time employees)
- Proper record keeping
- Uniform tarrif (price/20L bucket)
- Regular payment of bills to Blantyre Water Board
- No cut off of water supply service by BWB

VS CURRENT SCENARIO
- Form Water Point Committee at every single kiosk consisting of volunteers
- No secretariat
- Volunteers rotate and sell water and keep money or hand over to someone
- Non-existent or poor record keeping
- Different rates being used (no consistency)
- Misuse of funds and non payment of bills to BWB
- Accumulated bills, non-payment, cut off service

• Poor services from the Water Board (e.g., slow response times to reported faults, requests for new kiosk connections, poor water quality, intermittent service, low pressure, etc.)

ANSWER: This is a huge challenge which is due to the fact that the BWB system was designed for a population 20 times smaller than the number of people it is serving now. It is a very old system installed over 50 years ago that needs major rehabiltation. The Government of Malawi and the Board recognise this challenge and have already sourced funds for the rehabilitation of the system. The project will take three years. We believe by 2011, this will no longer be a challenge.

We are in partnership with Blantyre Water Board to make sure it takes care of the needs of the urban poor. Currently they have established a Kiosk Management Unit, which takes care of the needs of the peri-urban water supply through the kiosks. So far there has been improvement in terms of time they take to respond to water problems in the unplanned settlements.

• Irregular billing periods and meter readings (including bills arriving less frequently than monthly, frequent use of meter consumption estimates in place of actual readings, faulty meters, water theft (trickling), and meters recording pressurized air flow (rather than water flow) as billable consumption);

ANSWER: This is being taken care of by the above mentioned project. Several options will be considered.

• High risk of vandalism on kiosks and pipes (which may not promptly repaired by the Water Board, leading to supply shortages at kiosks and customers being diverted to the “free” supply of leaking water).

ANSWER: The system has 2 parts; 1 before the meter, is the responsibility of the BWB, while the part from the meter is the responsibility of the water user. In our proposal we have included cost for constructing meter boxes to protect the meters from being vandalised. Most of the time it is a meter which is stollen.

Private managers are less likely to tolerate such problems, as they would cut into profits. Similarly, although this was not mentioned per se, but if there are problems with non-payment by users, this is usually much more readily dealt with by private sector management. What is the response by the Water Board to non-payers? Are they cut-off from services?

Existing Water Supply and Sanitation Services: Legal areas have good service. Illegal areas have scattered service to some areas. However, “in many cases service is inadequate to meet community needs”. The proposed infrastructure would mainly provide services to the illegal areas where services are minimal or absent altogether. There is a clear demand for improved services at the proposed site.

Engineering Design Issues
• 125 persons per tap seems reasonable as that is about 25 families. Will tap users pay?

ANSWER: 125 persons per tap is in line with government regulations. Yes, tap users will pay. Actually people in the unplanned settlements, especially those that do not have household connections, pay as they use. If they have no cash, then they are denied access to safe water. They buy water per 20L bucket.

• There does not appear to be any initial assessment of the proposed raw water source, although it does say that water quality will be tested annually. The proposed source should be first tested and meet government WQ standards. At least the raw water quality should be able to be treated to meet those standards as a pre-condition for providing BPR funding.
Capital Investment Costs and Financing.

ANSWER: The water will be supplied by BWB. BWB has several sources (reservoirs), but this water will most likely come from Mudi Dam. The BWB has a treatment plant and Laboratory that folllows both World Health Organisation Standards and Malawi Government standards. The water is tested before its distributed either to households or kiosks. They also have monitors who collect random samples from different distribution lines. Doing regular treatment or testing for our kiosks would be a duplication of efforts.

• Capital Investment Cost - $30,875 (proposed) from BPR, supplemented with a very modest $2,500 in local co-financing from “communities”. Does this mean local government, or beneficiary contributions? Is that in cash or in-kind? What about beneficiary contributions (see below)?

ANSWER: The community beneficiaries have commited to contribiting $2,500 in kind contributions and BWB is contributing US$3,375 in kind and cash. This would be in addition to the $30,875 requested from BPR.

• For the piped water users, O&M costs are estimated to be only $808 per YEAR. For similar sized (number of beneficiaries) pumped treated water systems in Vietnam, the monthly O&M cost is about $250 per MONTH. Is this $808 a reasonable estimate?

ANSWER: Yes. This will go towards payment of the kiosk attendants, as well as a contribution towards the book keeper. Note that this is after they have paid the water bill to Blantyre Water Board. They will be collecting much more than this, which they will use to pay for the monthly water bill and remain with at least that for maintenance.

As already highlighted, they are only responsible to do maintenace from where the meter is to the where the actual kiosk is. So basically they will do mantenance of the Bib taps, some valves, meter, and soak away pits.

The pipelines, treatment plant and tanks are part of the Blantyre Water Board responsibility. Water bills include the cost for maintaining the system.

• Will tap users pay?

ANSWER: Yes. They will pay enough to cover for the Blantyre Water Board bills and O & M and kiosk management admin costs.

O&M and Financial Sustainability:
How will the BPR beneficiary ensure that there will be:
• Co-financing (cash and in-kind) by local government (cash) and beneficiaries (cash and in-kind services such as digging the pipe line trenches)?
ANSWER: Beneficiaries have commited to providing labour and BWB is also conributing both in cash and kind (refer to budget)

• Customer willingness and ability to co-pay capital investment cost;
ANSWER: Refer to budget

• Customer willingness and ability to pay for water tariffs;
ANSWER: All water provided by BWB is not free but has a fee. This a custom and everybody is aware of this. Actually without the kiosk, people from these low income areas pay more for water if they buy from and individual, which forces them just to buy one bucket/day just for drinking and get the rest from unprotected sources.

• Who will provide operation, maintenance, repair and replacement technical support? ANSWER: The subtechnical committee for Operation and Maintenance will be trained to do minor maintenance. In the case of major maintenance, the O & M committee will hire a plumber or technician from Blantryre Water Board or any other private sector and pay using the tarrif collection.

• Are all necessary parts and materials readily available at reasonable prices from local providers? (I assume so, as it is apparently right outside the capital city).
ANSWER: Yes
• Who will establish (and adjust from time to time) the water tariffs?
ANSWER: The board of Trustees and the BWB

• Are there qualified local private technicians (or possibly Water Board staff moon-lighting) who can and will be willing to provide technical support services as required? Presumably yes, as it is near the capital city.
ANSWER: Yes, engaging the private sector to provide technical support is a part of this proposal.

Water Source - Supply, Recharge, and Quality

By Peer Water Exchange Posted on Wed 19 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

A few questions regarding the source of the water, leaving aside issues of ownership:

- Where is the source of the water?
- How big (estimate) is the source?
- Can it run out? I am assuming demand will grow - what are population pressures?
- Is it being recharged? Is that possible?
- What are the issues regarding quality and purity?

Is there anything with regard to demand side:
- Charging for water usage?
- Ensuring some equity?
- Population services education?

From the standpipe onwards, its a good project, but i have (as others) have questions about the source.

Thanks!

Water Source - Supply, Recharge, and Quality

By Water for People Posted on Fri 21 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

Thanks for your questions Rajesh. They are great. Please find responses from our field staff below:

- Where is the source of the water?
There are two sources of water for Blantyre Water Board. The Mudi Dam which is in City of Blantyre and the Shire River which is 20km from Blantyre City. The water produced from these sources can be supplied to any part of the city through a network of pipes and system of pump and valve operations.

- How big (estimate) is the source?
Mudi Dam which normally supplies Machinjiri and Nkolokoti areas, has the capacity of 45,000m3/day of treated water. Shire River Treatment Plant has the capacity of 80,000m3/day of treated water. However the Shire River Water Source has unlimited capacity of raw water. The limitation is the current capacity to treat water.

- Can it run out? I am assuming demand will grow - what are population pressures?
Mudi Dam somettimes dries out when there has been a drought. However Shire River is very perenial in nature as it drains from Lake Malawi. So in terms of raw water, the souce can be regarded as unlimited capacity-the source can be regarded as not one that can run out because in times of Mudi Dam running dry Shire source becomes the only source supplying all the areas within Blantyre Water Board mandate.

- What are the issues regarding quality and purity?
Blantyre Water Board uses conventional treatment plants to achieve potable water of acceptable standards for Drinking Water by WHO satandards. So quality and purity is of acceptable standards.

Is there anything with regard to demand side:
- Charging for water usage?
In unplanned areas, the most common mode of connecting to the Blantyre Water Board Supply is throgh communal water points/kiosks. Usage at these kiosks is at 0.02USD per 20 liter container.

- Ensuring some equity?
That is what we are supporting. Most of the water supply distribution is in the high income areas but not in these areas where low income people stay. So by supporing this we are improving on equity.

- Population services education?
We will identify Hygiene promoters, who will be oriented about issues of Hygiene and Sanitation. We will also train the Executive and the teachnical committee on Water Point Management.

Water Source - Supply, Recharge, and Quality

By East Meets West Foundation Posted on Fri 21 Dec 2007, almost 18 years ago

Sounds alright to me.