Factors Influencing Sustainability of Water Projects by Companies in Rural Communities

Factors Influencing Sustainability of Water Projects by Companies in Rural Communities

Introduction

Water has been a significant point of concern for most marginalized or rather third world countries. Moreover, sustenance of water projects is a desire wanted to be achieved by every community, government, or even private organizations, which ensures that the maximum profitability of the project is delivered to the beneficiaries. National governments and water companies try to establish a means of generating and distributing water to almost every household. They have also attempted to stipulate measures in place to ensure that every individual has access to water. But this has been a problem to specify because of certain hindrances such as sustaining the water projects developed in third world countries. Sustainability of projects depends on the prudent standards that water companies, NGOs, as well as communities in which the program being implemented, have installed to save the foreseen future. A good project plan exemplifies the roles that every stakeholder has in ensuring that implementation is not only the last stage but how it will be managed in the next two to five years after executing every task in the plan. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the various factors that influence the sustainability of water projects in communities, using the Maasai community in Kenya as an example of communities facing water problems.

Factors influencing sustainability and how they are to be implemented

Several studies have been developed in understanding the various elements that affect the sustenance of water projects. The outcomes found might have brought some resolutions to this problem but not entirely. Therefore, this calls for further investigation to know the means of keeping the projects running even after being completed. Hence, this study was influenced by the rate at which other projects failed to sustain themselves immediately or even months or years of completion. Coming up with the standards and measures of ensuring that projects do not fail is the solution to the long term existence of a project. In this case, we need to understand some of the factors that fail plans and strategies that can be used to counter such issues. These components are elaborated as follows to get further insights on sustaining water projects.

1. The extent to which communities participate in the projects

For a complete execution of a project, all the stakeholders involved in the upbringing should be engaged highly in the planning, designing, and implementation process. This is done to avoid the occurrence of conflicts of interest from any parties. But the significant stakeholders that determine the effectiveness and successful completion of a project are the community members. Communities define what they want and how they perceive it to be to them. Negative perceptions of a task to be executed in a given community determine whether the outcome of the project will be beneficial or not. For instance, the Maasai community is a pastoralist community that tends to such for pasture as well as water for their cattle (Adaka & Mercy, 2018). The implemented project has to convince the people of the importance of enacting its usefulness instead of shifting to different places in search of water when seasons change. Due to cases of moving rain patterns, which cause the movements of people, the water projects should act as a source of relief for the community or instead reduce these patterns. Hence, engaging the community in the project will ease in meeting the needs of community members and not just the company or organization instituting the plan.

2. Project financing

Project financing is a vital organ in project management. Without adequate, potential, and reliable source of sourcing funds for a project, the outcomes might be an incomplete or an imperfect project in the long run. The funds for implementing a plan should be sourced to the extent of maintaining proper conditions at least up to six months of implementation. Financing institutions, community members, and the project management team should be made aware of the amount of money required to sustain the project. Given that a water project is a non-profiting project, funds have to be set aside to ensure that beneficiaries do not stop benefiting from the project a few months after it is completed.

3. Training of the community in sustaining the project

Better projects remain successful if the people gaining from it have been trained and given the skills to ensure the project remains successful. The technical know-how of operating the machines or maintaining the plan for sustainability has to be mandated to the members residing in the community. Implementing a project that beneficiaries do not know how leads to failure at the brink of finishing it.

4. Imposing water tariffs can also be a solution to sustainability

Water tariffs are charges imposed on the water supplied to the consumers. They are compensations for the water used by an individual. Therefore, water projects done by water companies in a given can be sustained if the companies charge a certain amount on the water they consume. This offers the organizations a fee that can be used to maintain their services in particular regions. It is the revenue utilized to maintain and improve the water status of a given region or area for long term usage and availability of its services.

Works cited

Adaka, Victor, and Mercy Mugambi. “FACTORS INFLUENCING SUSTAINABILITY OF COMMUNITY MANAGED RURAL WATER SUPPLY PROJECTS IN PASTORALIST AREAS OF KENYA. A CASE OF MERTI SUB COUNTY, ISIOLO COUNTY.” Journal of Developing Country Studies 3.1 (2018): 16-40.