Technical evaluation the sustainability of rural water supply projects on chora district, Illu Aba Bora zone, Oromia region, Ethiopian: case study on chora district

Abstract

Water is evidently pays a very important role in development of rural and urban areas. Poor water supplies continue to be a critical problem in rural areas of Ethiopia. Rural areas are usually small, disperse, agricultural communities with population of 5,000 or fewer and without the necessary economic, technical or in institutional base to improve sustainable water supply. A great deal of attention has recently been given to the question of sustaining rural services i.e. how to ensure, systems were continue to function and produce the intended benefits after project completion, and how to improve services delivery. The discussion on sustainability of rural water supply project is very wide and the issue it encompasses multi-dimensional. It deals with the technical, health, economical, institutional, environmental, and social issues. In addition to constructing new water supply schemes attention should give to the operation and maintenance of the existing schemes in order to achieve the envisaged objectives. The objective of this study is to evaluation of the technical sustainability of rural water supply situation in Oromia region, Illu Aba Bara zone, chora districts. The evaluation of rural water supply situation in selected rural areas based on desk study of relevant literature and findings of the field assessment on the performance of the water supply systems. The study was carry out in eight chora districts by visiting 48 water supply schemes. The four types of water supply technologies studied in the thesis are hand dug wells, spring development, shallow wells and deep well. In the district, the total of (231) Schemes 79.65% are functional and 20.35% of the schemes are non-functional. Inadequate delivery of rural water supply system services, due to so many, difficulties are inhibiting the access of communities to basic water supply system infrastructure services. The existing facilities are often poorly constructed and insufficiently maintained, and do not adequately provide urgent needed basic services .The major problems which are noticed in the sample water supply projects are structural defects, quantity, non-reliability, inconvenience, and too much user, lack of maintenance and repair and lack of trained person. Among the numerous factors that contributed to the poor performance of the schemes are technical and institutional problems. Poor facilities design, poor construction, and lack of provision for system management and operation and maintenance, limited police implementation, lack of capacity to keep the system running after project completion, poor cooperation between the water agent and the beneficiary, lack of involvement of the community in the planning and construction process have also increase the problems. According to the finding water quantity of 14.03 liter per person per day is under recommended so that it is better to maintain the non-functional (184) water supply schemes and increasing the performance of undergoing constructing schemes of the district. The need for proper and sustain operation and maintenance program, need of quality checking and control, importance of cooperation between different water supply implementing agencies, need for encouraging community involvement as the key to ensure project sustainability and reduce costs, and implementing systematic and decentralized management and monitoring system of water supply schemes at the village level.