An Alternative Model for Pro-Poor Water Services: Improving Water Tariff Payments in Low Income Communities

Abstract

The paper aimed at presenting an alternative model for pro-poor water services. The failure of public or public private sector partnerships to meet the expectations of both the service providers and low income communities in terms of service quality and meeting the operational cost of production, has given rise to the need to develop alternative strategies to address the situation.The paper presents the Multi-factorial Pro-poor Community Water Service Model or the Malongza’s Model as a special recommendation for improving the ability of low income communities to pay for public water tariffs. The paper maintains that poor tariff payments in low income communities are due to the inability of the implemented models to address the root causes of poverty itself. This study is of the exploratory research type, and basically prospective by design. In other words, it sought to prescribe a model that could sustainably reduce water poverty.  The model is typically of the tripartite partnership category, and its multi-factorial basis implies that it does not only advocate for partnership involving the public, private and community level institutions, but also prescribes multiple factors for execution by the various partners based on their respective potentials. The Malongza’s model has five main tenets, namely the initiation for partnership; tripartite partnership formation; definition of geographical scope of operation; identification of low income communities with sector specific problems for intervention; and project implementation or intervention. Though the model focuses on pro-poor water services, it could also be considered as a multi-factorial community development model and its provisions modified for any sustainable community development project that is participatory by nature.

Key descriptors: Alternative model, tripartite partnerships, pro-poor water services, water tariff payment