Abstract:
The benefits of having access to an improved drinking water source can only be fully realized when
there is also access to improved sanitation and adherence to good hygiene practices. Whereas, An
estimated 801,000 children younger than 5 years of age perish from diarrhea each year, mostly in
developing countries due to lack of access to clean water. According to Gewata Woreda Water &
Irrigation office, large number of water points(30-50%) become non-functional before the intended 5
years’ service. Low attention by concerned bodies and affordability of spare parts are some of the
factors for the problem. The objectives of this research are to assess the small scale water projects
effectiveness and to identify factors affecting the effectiveness of these small scale water projects in
Gewata woreda, Kaffa zone, SNNRS of South west of Ethiopia. In general this research will benefit a
lot of people groups. Some of them are, government offices specially the district water, energy and
mineral office, Non- governmental organizations, researchers and monitoring and evaluation agencies
and also researchers. And when we come to the scope of the research, this research focuses only small
scale rural water schemes. The limitation of the research might be related with some question like the
question to know about the durability of the technology might be too technical that might be answered
by technical staffs rather than WASHcos. And the research has employed both qualitative and
quantitative data collection procedures. The research design used was community based cross
sectional study. And because of small number of water schemes the investigator has took all small scale
water schemes for study. The target population Data was collected through interview and the collected
data was encoded in to CSpro software and then exported to SPSS for analysis. Accordingly, the
effectiveness status of small scale water schemes in the district in terms of their expected service year
found to be only 30.94%.And poor utilization status by users, unaffordable maintenance cost and
durability of material found to be factors affecting effectiveness of Small scale water schemes in the
district. Based on the findings, the investigator has recommended that in parallel to constructing new
water schemes, there should be due attention and follow-up for already inaugurated water schemes too.
That regular checkup practice of the function of the water schemes need to be strengthen.
