Water Services Management
Department of Management and Institutions
In many low- and middle-income countries service providers have failed to provide consumers with adequate water supply and sanitation services.
Despite some recent progress – between 1980 and 2005 an additional 2.7 billion people gained access to water supplies and 700 million to sanitation services – more than 1.1 billion people still do not have access to safe water and 2.4 billion lack access to sanitation services.
The existing situation of inadequate service provision is exacerbated by the fact that population growth and increasing urbanization have offset much of the gains in service coverage. Many utilities therefore face new and increasingly difficult challenges in providing services to those living in peri-urban areas.
In addition to problems of service coverage and service expansion, many water utilities face a variety of other problems. These include high unaccounted-for-water (UfW) loss rates (often averaging 40%-60%), financial problems, and human resources problems, including overstaffing (sometimes with five to seven times more staff than what is considered ‘efficient’), lack of motivation, and lack of capacity to provide services.
Many of these problems can be traced back to management issues. Financial problems, for example, often appear to be due to a combination of low tariffs, poor customer record keeping, inappropriate technology choices, the fact that many urban poor are unable to pay for services, inefficient billing and collection systems, and subsidy schemes that benefit the richer rather than the poorer sections of society.
Addressing these management issues is the concern of the Water Services Management (WSM) core group. Its activities include research, education and training related to the management of urban and peri-urban water supply and sanitation services in low and middle-income countries, and in research and capacity building for the water services sector in EU countries.
The work of the core group is therefore undertaken in the context of the overwhelming need to reduce poverty. In urban areas the focus overlaps with the wider concerns of integrated urban development, and in rural areas with the provision of irrigation water, all within the context of integrated water resources management to ensure water security and environmental integrity.