Factors affecting effectiveness of Small scale Water Projects in Gewata District, Kaffa zone, SNNPRS, South west of Ethiopia.

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.