Abstract:
An effort was made in this research to assess the impact of WSP in municipal piped
water supply systems based on identified key indicators. A quality assurance tool
was developed to carry out auditing of WSPs that indicates the maturity of any
WSP, implemented in urban-piped water supplies. Finally, the QA audit tool was
used in selected two municipal towns to carry out a gap analysis of the implemented
WSPs in comparison to ideal scenario. The results of indicator based WSP impact
assessment and WSP audit were validated against findings from water quality test
results and household survey findings.
The key research questions that were answered through the research include whether
WSP have affirmative impact on realizing health-based outcomes and if WSP
implemented in different type of urban-piped water supply systems can be audited
on a common ground so that maturity of different WSPs can be compared. The
indicator based assessment showed positive outcome and impact of WSP in both
Chandpur and Chapai-Nawabganj Pourashava.
In Chandpur, level of operations and management practices increased to 24 from 8
out of 40 points. The cost recovery has improved as revenue collected per consumer
has increased to 128 BDT/consumer from 68 BDT/consumer in last one year.
Stakeholders’ knowledge and understanding have also increased from 12 to 19 out
of 25. Percentage of treated water samples compliant with microbial water quality
targets increased to 90 with WSP compared to 80 without WSP. Diarrheal incidence
rate also decreased to 24 percent from 34 percent at that stages.
Operations and management practices in Chapi-Nawabganj increased to 17 from 8
out of 40 points. However, operating cost of produced water increased by 0.34
BDT/cubic-meter mainly due to increase in electricity tariff over time.
Understanding of water supply system by the stakeholders has been increased from
five to 25 on a scale of 25. Eighty percent water samples are compliant with microbial water quality targets with WSP, which was 50 percent without WSP.
Diarrheal incidence rate has also gone down from 37 percent to 29 percent. WSP
audit performed using the QA tool scored 93 and 98 out of 120 in Chandpur and
Chapai-Nawabganj respectively. This indicated that the WSP maturity in both the
water supply systems stands as ‘Good’.
The QA tool has high prospect to be used in the country and region as WSP audits
become increasingly important due to its integration with regulatory environment.
The tool can be further tailored to suit all scheme types and levels of sophistication.
