Hitosa water supply: a people's project - watsanmissionassistant

HITOSA WATER SUPPLY: A PEOPLE’S PROJECT• The villages and towns to be covered bythe scheme have a history of contact andcollaboration with one another.• Income and educational levels are aboveaverage and relatively equitablydistributed.At the Regional level government staff inArssi have an unusual degree of training andexperience.All these factors explain the speed and easewith which the project was implemented. Aless well-resourced area would require fargreater inputs from project staff in mobilisingand strengthening the communities. Equally,had WaterAid’s government partners beenless well-trained and experienced, WaterAidwould have needed to make more inputs intocapacity building and staff training.ConclusionThe Hitosa Water Supply Scheme challengesthe orthodoxy that large-scale necessarilyequates to complexity. To the contrary,Hitosa shows that gravity water supplyschemes, even ones as extensive as this,are technically simple and can be operated,maintained and managed by people withoutspecialised skills.Yilma, Hitosa’s Head of Finance, is no dewyeyedromantic on the subject of communitymanagement. ‘There’s nothing peculiar aboutcommunity management’ he says. ‘It runsin the same way as any other system, withthe same rules and regulations. Thedifference is that decisions get taken morequickly because we’re all on the spot andwe’re as affected as anyone else by whathappens to the water supply.’WaterAid/Caroline PennCommunity participation is vital in a large-scale project like the one in Hitosa. Here technicians, togetherwith members of the local community, help to lay pipes for the new water supply.PAGE 26