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Government expenditure on infrastructure has been high in most developing countries. However, though access to services has broadened, the general condition of infrastructure is poor, and the quality of service has deteriorated. Water services is a good example of this problematique. / The purpose of this thesis is to provide a demand-oriented perspective on water provision for domestic users. The thesis examines cost recovery potential based on household willingness to pay more for an improved service and water pricing. Also, factors contributing to rising provision costs are explored, with the aim of formulating prescriptions for demand management and lowered costs. The thesis also focuses on institutional strengthening scenarios which achieve a demand orientation in water delivery. To this end, competition in the provision of water services and the regulation of service providers are examined. / A case study of domestic users in Trinidad was undertaken. Households in the main urban area were surveyed to test willingness to pay for water improvements using a questionnaire which incorporated three methodologies; contingent ranking, contingent valuation and the household production function. The household production function examined the revealed preference of consumers, whereas the contingent ranking and contingent valuation considered the stated preference for different features of the water service. / The survey found that most consumers were willing to pay more than twice the current price of water, contingent upon a guaranteed improvement in service, particularly reliability. The main factors influencing willingness to pay were household income, the price of water, number of service hours, and housing and land tenure. The results indicate that while the potential for cost recovery does exist, formulating demand-oriented water policies with a focus on improved reliability is necessary. / Extensive interviews were also conducted with professionals from both local and international agencies involved in the water sector, to elicit their perspectives on the problems of water agencies and possible solutions. There is a consensus among sector professionals that water agencies should emphasize improvements in operational performance, system maintenance and rehabilitation, and quality and reliability of service, instead of increases in capacity through new investments. Professionals took the common position that institutional capacity building was needed to achieve these results.

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Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2006

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).

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Upper middle and upper class Trinidadians are equally though differently entangled in the effects of global, regional and local processes of crime, risk and fear as their counterparts from lower classes. A recent rapid increase in violent crime and particularly a five-fold increase in murder rates in under ten years has caused a shift in lifestyle patterns and are imagining of social, public and private space in the country. Upper class groups conjure and employ an image of a classed and raced 'bad man' who is held responsible for increases in crime and gang violence and is the locus for anxieties for fears for personal safety and the future of the nation. My research shows that upper middle and upper classes increasingly assert, re-create and negotiate their class position with reference to changing informal rules of 'safe' behaviour and movement in reference to this conjured 'bad man'. Home spaces are created and fortified against those construed as 'risky'. Informal rules of appropriate 'safe' behaviour are negotiated and emerge through endless talk of crime. This talk re-imagines and reifies nearly all lower classes as 'risky' and the conclusions of this talk invariably lead to greater attempted isolation of upper classes from lower classes. National elections in 2007 and 2010 point to a potential long-term shift away from racialized voting patterns, even as racialized and classed stereotypes flourish. Recent successes of an ostensibly non-racial third political party point to new electoral paradigms and indicate that increases in crime and fear of crime supercede more simplistic racebased allegiances. A paradox, between upper class attempts at increased isolation from crime and continued re-imagining of markers of classed and racialized difference on the one hand, and a perhaps historic change in voting patterns away from long held notions of racial difference on the other hand weave throughout this dissertation and point to the ways in which understandings of risk and crime can influence social change. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)