Community Participation as Strategy to Ensure Sustainability of Rural Water Supply Projects

Abstract

Water is essential for life existence here on earth. Provision of safe water supply scheme will go a long way in making life meaningful. Huge resources are being deployed to make water available, but more than half of water supply schemes provided in rural areas failed. The aim of this research is to find ways of making rural water supply schemes sustainable. Sustainability in this context is the ability of a water supply schemes to function as a source of safe water supply continuously and indefinitely. To achieve sustainability in rural water supply schemes, community members should be involved. Tothis end communities where water supply schemes are to be located should have members included indecisions such as; project type, site selection, construction, maintenance and repairs. This will engender ownership of the project by community members, which will result in them safeguarding the project and contributing to its repairs when broken down. Therefore, getting the host community members included as part of water supply scheme provision will bring about sustainability in the rural water supply scheme. Hence, we recommend that Community Water Committee (CWC),be established to drive the rural water supply schemes for sustainability.