Domestic End-users’ Participation in Managing Urban Water Supply in Emerging Cities: Evidence from Wa, Ghana

Moshie-Dayan Laminu,Maxwell Okrah,Divine K Ahadzie

doi:10.4314/gjds.v18i1.1

Abstract

Domestic end-users’ participation in urban water management is essential to achieving improved water delivery system that meet the needs of all urban dwellers in Ghana. This paper examined how domestic end-users can effectively participate in managing urban water in Wa. The study used semi-structured questionnaires and key informant interviews with a sample of 379 households and two staff from Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) and Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC). Kendall’s coefficient of concordance analysis and content analysis were the analytical techniques employed. It found that households’ level of participationin urban water management was 14%. Results of the Kendall’s analysis showed a coefficient of 0.59, which indicates that there is a high agreement level among households that the low level of participation is attributed to GWCL’s lack of trust in end-users’ capacity to make meaningful inputs. It identifies formation of urban zonal water management committees, communication and information sharing, operational transparency and assigning specific roles to end-users as some of the strategies for improving participation in urban water management. These findings have implications for the realisation of the Ghana National Water Policy objective of participatory decision-making in urban water management. It is important that GWCL streamlines its operations and sensitise end-users on its operations Keywords: End-users, Participation, Urban Water, Management, Challenges

Highlights

The need to manage urban water supplies became apparent with the advent of urbanisation and industrialisation, and the requirement for urban water supply to keep pace with demand for drinking, industry, health and sanitation (Hurlimann & Wilson, 2018)
This indicates that a significant number of domestic end-users interviewed do not take part in the management process
Domestic end-users in the city currently participate less in urban water management as revealed by the study. This low level of participation is predicated on a combination of factors such as lack of trust in end-users’ capacity to make meaningful decisions or inputs, lack of willingness or desire to engage with end-users and the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) delivery approach, which does not have any clear role carved out for user participation

Summary

Introduction

The need to manage urban water supplies became apparent with the advent of urbanisation and industrialisation, and the requirement for urban water supply to keep pace with demand for drinking, industry, health and sanitation (Hurlimann & Wilson, 2018). Management of urban water supplies has, over the years, been considered a technical issue and is limited to the technical professionals with little or no participation of the end-users. There has been the growing concern, especially within contemporary development theory and practice, for user participation in urban water management. While substantial attention is on technical aspects of utilities, the voice of users is often muted, and the consequence is that service providers do not take account of end-users’ priorities and preferences. The result is often a vicious cycle of unreliable water delivery systems that produce services that do not meet end-users’ needs, deterioration in service delivery and alienating users (Avolio, 2016). The main argument of this paper is that the need to manage urban water effectively is the need to reflect upon end-users' participation

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