This is an in-depth case study of urban water services to poor households and their interactions with local state power in the community of Eastwood, Pietermaritzburg, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, for the period 2005-2007. It draws especially on the experiences of poor women, exploring the conceptions and implications of the movement of municipal services into the realm of welfare-based urban service concessions. It interrogates what value municipal services, framed in the language and form of welfare but within a commodification milieu and in the context of shifting citizen-state relations offer the state apparatus and how such free basic service offerings are experienced by poor households at the level of domestic, social and economic functioning. The study adopts a fluid mixed-methodological approach to optimise exploration and interpretation. It argues that the interface of state service delivery and citizens is fraught with contradictions: core to this is the nature of state ' help.' Free basic water encompassed in the social wage did not improve the lives of poor households; instead it eroded original water access. Free basic water stole women's time spent on domestic activities; compromised appropriate water requirements, exacerbated service affordability problems and negatively affected household functioning. Poor households experienced the government's policy of free basic services as containment and punishment for being poor. The Indigent Policy activated the state's surveillance, disciplinary and control apparatus. In the absence of effective national regulation over municipalities and with financial shortfalls, street-level bureaucrats manipulated social policies to further municipal cost recovery goals and subjugate poor households. Social control and cheap governance were in symmetry. Citizens, desperate for relief, approached the state. Poor households were pushed into downgraded service packages or mercilessly pursued by municipally outsourced private debt collectors and disconnection companies. Municipalities competing for investments brought about by favourable credit ratings abandoned the humanity of their citizens. Such re-prioritisation of values had profound implications for governance and public trust. Citizens were jettisoned to the outskirts of municipal governance, resulting in a distinct confusion and anger towards the local state - and with it, major uncertainties regarding future stability, redistribution and equity.

Access to adequate water and sanitation services in South Africa still remain a pipe dream for the millions who are trapped at the bottom of the class structures in the country. The poverty stricken communities living in Townships such as Motherwell, everyday long for water services infrastructure to be built in their places of residence. The costs of accessing water services also becomes a setback for many consumers in the area, this is after the infrastructure has been installed in their areas. The high unemployment rate plays an enormous role in many consumers not affording water services. Bureaucracy between the government department of Housing and the NMMBM also impedes delivery of water services for without formal housing, water and sanitation is impossible to be accessed within the households. The study revealed from the semi-structured interviews which were held with Mayoral Council official and Ward Councillors as well as with members of the communities NU 12 and 29 that access to adequate water services was not successful and satisfactory. The findings of the research demonstrate that the Municipality has a problem with retaining staff members in the portfolio of Infrastructure, Engineering, Electricity and Energy, which is the responsible department for providing water and sanitation services to the local inhabitants. This study was conducted from April 2009 to November 2009 and it was aimed at finding the Barriers to accessing water services in the Motherwell Township.

Thesis (M. Dev.) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / The aim of the study was to examine the challenges of water supply management in Umdoni Local Municipality. Two methods were employed to collect data in the study. The first method involved one-on-one interviews with the participants. An interview guide was used to obtain data pertaining water supply services from a water services manager, a municipal manager and ten (10) ward councillors. The second method entailed analysis of documents within the municipality. In this study findings were based on issues such as prioritization of effective water supply for Umdoni Local Municipality, community consultation and participation, addressing capacity constrains in the Municipality such as human resources, water service infrastructure and skills development. The underlying causes of the water supply problems are based on the basic infrastructure, provision of water supply being very poor and dismal across the area. Water serves as a basic need to which everybody has the right to access, however, water supply is unfortunately disrupted by many factors. The findings in this study shows that poor water supply emanates from many factors such as management skills, technical challenges and illegal connections. This study recommends that Umdoni Local Municipality has additions of water plants, building of new reservoirs and upgrades of water pipes, especially in Amahlongwa area as it needs urgent attention.

MRDV / Institute for Rural Development

Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

No description available.

The eradication of global poverty is central to the concept of sustainable development. In developing nations the lack of essential infrastructure and technologies, which are necessary to provide people with their basic human rights, offer a central role for the engineer. These needs are increasing as new global threats, such as the pressures caused by population growth, the harmful effects of climate change or the increasing frequency and intensity of disasters, have only heightened the difficulties which threaten the world’s poorest nations. Decades of development practice has allowed the profession of engineering to engage with many of these global issues. Over this period the engineering approaches, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, have gradually moved from high impact and short-term disasters relief interventions to long-term endogenous solutions. This change in overall aims has raised awareness of the sustainability of current engineering interventions. Many of the results are not entirely positive. For example, in water supply engineering, certain national estimates of sustainability of hand-pump wells for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa can range from 30- 80%. The role that the engineer could provide in addressing the concerns of poorer nations has not yet been fully realised. This thesis evaluates the current engineering models of service delivery that are used by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in developing nations. These models of technology transfer are supposed to provide communities in developing nations with a sustainable access to technologies that can provide for their basic rights. It is from within these models that engineers, who in many cases are foreign to the socio-cultural systems of the host nation, perform their engineering function and activities. The field research focuses on a case study of water supply engineering projects that have been carried out within the rural District of Tonkolili in Sierra Leone. To address the complex socio-cultural and socio-technical systems in Sierra Leone this field research adopted a combination of qualitative and quantitative assessment methods. This involved investigating both the technical and social sustainability issues found in Sierra Leone. The research visits were both inductive and deductive. They covered 150 spatially distributed villages in the rural district of Tonkolili. The methodologies used as part of this study involved; interviews, focus group discussions, community mapping, transect walks and technical observations, to provide a broad understanding of the sustainability issues affecting engineering projects. A total of 309 hand-pump wells, pulley systems and borehole water points were evaluated as part of the research. The study investigated the technical, socio-technical and socio-cultural consequences of these technology transfers - as well as the current condition of the social support mechanisms that are designed to sustain the water schemes. The results of the technical observations demonstrated that there are a diverse range of failures, from extreme to moderate, that have occurred at many of the water points. During the field visits observations of water supply solutions found to have urgent technical problems were frequent occurrences. The majority of the water points (96%) were found to have at least one technical failing that required immediate maintenance or further engineering assistance. The social research also indicated that, of the 4,700 individual categories monitored, a significant proportion (49%) were technical problems that were within the capacities of village members to address locally. These technical problems found to be ignored by the host communities. The NGO trained support mechanisms, which were designed to provide sustainability to the systems, for innumerable reasons, were unable to operate effectively. The breakdown in function of these supporting systems highlighted the serious weakness of current service delivery models in their ability to achieve sustainable engineering solutions. Investigating the relationship between the households and the water points suggests that the communities are not acting rationally towards their water sources. The majority of households were found to have unsafe water practices regardless of the provision of their improved sources. For example, many households that had access to improved water sources were found to still use their unimproved sources (30%). Many more (53%) complemented, and mixed, their unimproved water with water from their improved wells. This attitude towards safe water suggested that there were fundamentally flawed assumptions about how communities would receive and interact with their technologies. These household decisions, and the associated technical concerns, are directly attributable to the actions of the engineers from the project implementing development agencies. The results of these misinterpretations have undermined the long term sustainability of water supplies in Sierra Leone. The research indicated that to address sustainability the engineering profession is at a crossroads in determining its future in international development. Engineers have the capacity to acknowledge that the complexities of development limit their efficacy and therefore seek support from other professions. This would narrow the scope of their interventions. They are also capable of actively seeking the opposite; to broaden the scope as well as the responsibilities, expectations and skills of the engineers. It is this decision that will define the role of the engineer in international development.

The aim of this project is to study the nitrate levels of the treated water flowing into Jakkur Lake in Bangalore, from the treatment plant situated at the inlet to the lake, and thereby evaluate the function of the lake as for secondary and tertiary wastewater treatment as well as an infiltration basin. Obtained nitrate levels are used as indicators to study the wastewater flow in the lake, and to find other possible inflows of sewage which can affect the lakes’ total treatment efficiency. A literature study is done on wetlands and on groundwater recharge through infiltration basins, and the possibility of recharging groundwater below Jakkur Lake is evaluated. Water samples are collected around and in the lake and the samples are tested for nitrate, pH and total dissolved solids. Extra focus is put on research on nitrates in water.The risks of groundwater recharge in Jakkur Lake include pollution of wells by bacteria, viruses, parasites and traces of medicine. Further geotechnical investigations need to be pursued mainly on the soil structure under and around the lake, and studies need to be performed on the retention time of the water in the lake. The technical limitations such as fluctuations in efficiency and pollutant migration must be minimized, which initially could be done by building a constructed wetland and controlling the inflow to the lake.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management