Tanzania PRIVATE OPERATION IN THE RURAL WATER SUPPLY IN CENTRAL TANZANIA: QUICK FIXES AND SLOW TRANSITIONS Sam Moon August 2006 WaterAid Tanzania PO Box 33759, Dar es Salaam Tel: 022 270 1609 Fax: 022 277 5306 [email protected] Abstract This paper is designed to assess the role of private sector participation in developing and sustaining rural water schemes. The data used is from the Geodata 3 Survey (corrected 9/6/2006) performed in 2004-6 in the regions of Tabora, Dodoma, Singida and Kiteto District, Manyara region. To determine whether private firms deliver a better service this paper will pose three key questions: 1. Is there a correlation between private management schemes and improved outputs (functionality rate, water quantity/quality) at the total population level or at regional and district levels; 2. What are private management schemes doing that other schemes are not – are there fundamental hardware or service differences; 3. Can a pattern of causation between better service and the private sector be established and if so what are the implications. Author’s Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful for the hospitality, support and information offered by WaterAid Tanzania and the staff in the Dodoma, Singida and Dar es Salaam offices. Their assistance and the funding made available was vital to this report. I would also like to thank the district WAMMA teams and Stevens Mwendi for the constant assistance and through commitment to facilitation of the fieldwork in this study. © WaterAid Tanzania 2006. i Table of Contents 1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................1 2. Background.......................................................................................................................2 2.1 The Area of Study............................................................................................................................. 2 2.2 History of Rural Water Supply Management.................................................................................... 2 3. Data Analysis.....................................................................................................................5 3.1 Using the Data and Defining Functionality Rate .............................................................................. 5 3.2 Age as a factor. ................................................................................................................................ 6 3.3 What is the Private Sector Doing Differently?.................................................................................. 8 3.4 Autonomy and Management............................................................................................................ 8 4. Follow-Up Survey ............................................................................................................ 10 4.1 Fieldwork and interview structure..................................................................................................10 4.2 Research Findings..........................................................................................................................10 5. Conclusions.................................................................................................................... 14 References......................................................................................................................... 15 Appendix A – Enquiry Framework ........................................................................................ 16 Appendix B – Summary of Study Villages............................................................................. 18 List of Boxes, Charts and Tables Box 2.1 Time Line................................................................................................................................... 3 Box 2.2 Management Types................................................................................................................... 4 Chart 3.1 – Functionality by management system................................................................................. 5 Chart 3.2 – Functionality by year of construction................................................................................... 6 Chart 3.3 – Functionality rate of gravity-fed schemes by year of construction...................................... 7 Chart 3.4 – Age and management type ................................................................................................. 7 Chart 3.5 – Extraction systems managed by private operators ............................................................. 8 Chart 3.6 – comparing functionality rates by autonomy of operator ..................................................... 9 Chart 4.1 – Estimated annual maintenance costs for handpumps.....................................................12 Chart 4.2 – Estimated cost recovery requirements for handpumps....................................................12 Table B.1 – Summary of Sample Villages – July 2006 ........................................................................18 Table B.2 – Summary, continued.........................................................................................................18 ii 1. Introduction This report presents the main findings of a limited qualitative study of the role of the private sector in developing and sustaining rural water schemes in Tanzania. Specifically it contrasts the performance of privately operated schemes with other forms of management and identifies barriers and flaws in implementing a private management system on a larger scale. Key issues that have emerged and will be discussed are the contract between operator and village, the availability of on-going support and maintenance, village size and engine type, and finally financial issues, particularly adherence to cost- recovery. Private operators were found to be generating greater amounts of public savings contributing to better sustainability, however there are numerous real and perceived barriers to initiating a privately operated scheme. The impact of district level support was found to be a significant factor particularly in the creation and supervision of contractual agreements and in the provision of ongoing access to maintenance and technical support. Private sector engagement in the role of technical support and maintenance is limited, partially due to policy and lack of expertise, but also due to the minimal profits to be gained from ward or even district sized technical support firms. Nevertheless certain villages expressed a keen interest in improving their ability to address technical problems through local channels. The ability to generate large volumes of income in a relatively short space of time has meant that some villages are able to function fairly autonomously whereas smaller or more sparsely populated villages are not even able to generate cost-recovery levels of income and are left entirely exposed in the event of a broken, stolen or silted water source. Since 2004 there has been an ongoing survey to map water points in the central Tanzanian regions. The data is being collected by Geodata, and the survey has been funded by Water Aid. This data covers 37 variables identifying location, type of water point, management and functional status. So far, the survey has mapped all water points in Singida, Tabora and Dodoma Regions and some districts within Manyara Region. The depth of coverage allows comparison to be drawn between regions and districts as well as profiling types of extraction system and types of management with the rate of functioning distribution points (DPs). The primary goals of this report are to produce valuable analysis directly from the data as well as investigate questions that emerge from this analysis. To achieve this second goal a follow-up survey was designed based upon the findings from the water point mapping data. The scope and time frame of the field work has meant that a purposive survey framework was chosen in which representatives from eight villages in Dodoma region as well as four DPs in the Singida peri-urban were interviewed. Villages were chosen primarily to investigate specific findings from the data and so most of the villages chosen represent an anomaly of some kind. In the next section, this paper will present a brief background of rural water policy and experience in Tanzania since independence. This background will help contextualise the study as well as identifying and explaining the function of National Water Policy management types existing in practice (Section 2). In the following section (Section 3) this paper will present an analysis of the Geodata water point mapping survey to identify trends in the rural water sector that help explain the role of the private sector. The enquiry framework of the follow-up survey is based upon these findings. Section 4 will firstly elaborate on the framework itself and then explain the implementation of the survey. The findings from the survey will then be presented. Section 5 will use the findings to discuss the impact and relevance of this analysis and provide a conclusion. 1 2. Background Shortly after independence the Government of Tanzania began formulating a ‘free water for all’ policy. The policy was consolidated in 1971 and aimed to provide every rural inhabitant with access to adequate, potable water free of charge by 1991. Upon implementation the Government was responsible for developing, operating