What determines the operational sustainability of rural drinking water points in Ethiopia? The case of Woliso woreda


 Water is a fundamental element essential for life and health. However, more than 33.3% of rural water services in Ethiopia are not functioning and hence sustainability of rural drinking water points in the country is under question. With this in mind, this study was undertaken to investigate the factors that affect the operational sustainability of rural drinking water points in Woliso woreda, Ethiopia. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected 211 households from six rural Kebeles, which were selected using stratified sampling technique. Focus group discussions and key interviews were also held along with observation. The quantitative data were analysed through descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. The qualitative data were used to augment the results from the regression analysis. The results revealed that water service fee, willingness to pay, occurrence of conflict in the water points, monitoring by water user committees, willingness to sustain service, users' participation in the water point construction, satisfaction with the water point service, perception on the possibility of contamination, and training on maintenance are found to be significant factors that affect the operational sustainability of rural drinking water points. Therefore, these significant factors should be sufficiently addressed when planning water supply projects.


INTRODUCTION
Water is an essential element for life and health. It also shapes economic and livelihood activities. Food security and income options generated in crop production, industry, domestic processing, aquaculture, livestock, recreation, navigation and transport, and electricity supply are obtained from water. Access to sufficient quality water is also fundamental for all human, animal and plant life. Thus, the provision of safe and adequate water supply has far-reaching effects on health, productivity, quality of life and to ensure sustainable socioeconomic development. To improve access to safe water supply and sanitation demand, water has to be supplied where and when it is needed. However, lack of water supply and sanitation services are substantial globally.
At global level, the availability of safe water is low.
According to a joint report by WHO and UNICEF (2019), one in three people or 2.2 billion people around the world lack safe drinking water, whereas 4.2 billion live without This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). safe sanitation services. The majority of the world's population without access to improved water supply or sanitation services live in Africa and Asia. One reason might be non-functionality of improved drinking rural water supply systems and the higher number of hand pumps in Africa not working at any given time. Nearly a third of all rural water supply schemes across sub-Saharan Africa is considered non-functional at any given time (Foster ). Thus, poor sustainability of water supply is a key barrier to accessing safe drinking water.
Failure to ensure access and safety of drinking water may expose the community to multidimensional risks related to health and socioeconomic activities (Foxwood ). For instance, a joint report by WHO and UNICEF () indicates that nearly 850,000 people die every year from lack of access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene.
As well, more than 360,000 children under the age of five die from diarrhoeal diseases. Waterborne diseases caused due to lack of adequate sanitation also force rural communities to spend a significant proportion of their meagre income on treatment and medication. The burden of this problem is also high on women's health and children's education. Women and girls spend large amounts of time carrying heavy vessels while walking long distances. The physical strain of these activities impacts their health, and if pregnant, the health of their unborn children. Girls spend an average of 200 hours each year collecting water and those who walk long distances to get water in the early morning fail to go to school or end up as drop-outs (WHO and UNICEF ).
In order to improve this situation, construction of potable water projects in rural areas is one of the major steps that enhances a community's access to safe water and the health of its members. However, this alone cannot guarantee sustainability of rural drinking water points. For example, more than 33.3% of rural water services in Ethiopia are not functioning due to lack of funds for operation and maintenance, and inadequate community participation and commitment (ADF ; Water Aid ; Foster ). As a result, there is wide agreement that non-functionality of rural water services threatens the sustainability of rural drinking water points in Ethiopia. Basically, the sustainability of rural drinking water points is about whether or not water points continue to be functional and deliver benefits over time. No time limit is set on those continued services.
In other words, the sustainability of water points is about permanent beneficial use in the water service (Water Aid ).
Access to safe drinking water supplies and sanitation services in Ethiopia are among the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, the government of Ethiopia approved the Universal Access Program with the objective of providing safe water to all citizens of the nation. Subsequently, the government, along with its development partners, has exerted a lot of effort and substantial progress has been made. At the end of the first phase of the Growth and Transformation Programme (GTP I), access to potable water for urban areas was 91% and access in rural Ethiopia was about 82% by the standards of GTP I (NPC ). Water supply coverage for rural areas by the standards of GTP I was 15 litre consumption per day per person (l/c/d) within 1.5 km radius, and 20 l/c/d in urban within 0.5 km radius. However, these figures go down considerably when lensed through GTP II standards (25 l/c/d within 1 km radius for rural areas and 40-100 l/c/d for urban areas); where rural, urban and national water supply coverage stood at 59%, 51% and 58%, respectively (NPC ). Cognizant of this low coverage, due emphasis was given under GTP II to the expansion of potable water supply with a target to achieve 85%, 75% and 83% potable water coverage, respectively in rural areas, urban areas and the country as a whole by the end of GTP II (2019/20). Towards achieving the plan in rural areas, a lot of investment was made in the construction of potable water points. The mid-term review of GTP II shows that potable water coverage has increased to 68.5% in rural areas, 54.7% in urban areas and overall coverage of 65.7% (NPC ).
Despite this progress, little is known about the operational sustainability of potable drinking water points. This paper, thus, investigates the determinants of operational sustainability of rural drinking water points/schemes (RDWPs) in Ethiopia by taking Woliso woreda, Oromia Regional State, as a case. Like other woredas of the region in particular, and the country in general, the woreda is not unique when it comes to the provision of rural drinking water point schemes by the government. From this perspective, the woreda could provide a good deal of evidence to reflect the problem as a rough representative of the country. As well as this, since one of the researchers has good knowledge of the woreda and had observed a considerable number of potable water projects failing to function after some time of operation, it made the woreda a good choice for the study.

Description of the study area
As shown in Figure  This shows that the coverage of water points is 86%. This has to be understood solely in terms of percentage coverage, but not in terms of the operational sustainability of the scheme (water points).

Sample size and sampling technique
A multi-stage sampling design was employed to select Kebeles and users (represented by household heads). First, six rural Kebeles with a relatively higher number of drinking water points, medium and lower number of drinking water points were selected after stratifying all the 37 rural Kebeles of the study area into three strata (Kebeles having higher, medium and lower number of drinking water points).
Second, the users of drinking water points were picked proportionally from each of the Kebeles through simple random sampling technique.
The sample size of the study was decided following Godden's () determination formula which is given below: where, n is the desired sample size; Z stands for standard score at 95% confidence level which is 1.96; p is estimated target population proportion; q is 1 À p; and d is confidence interval, expressed as a decimal, in this case 0.05. Substituting the value into the formula provided a sample size of 196.
By assuming 7.5% for contingency, 211 users were selected for the survey.
In addition, two experts from the water sector office of the woreda were purposively selected for key interview, and three focus group discussions (FGD) comprising six household heads from each Kebele were organized. The participants for the key interview and focus group discussion were selected purposively based on their knowledge and experience (participation in construction and subsequent management) on potable water points.

Data source and collection instruments
Both primary and secondary sources of data were used. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data. This tool was used in particular to collect socioeconomic and water point-related data (on the variables indicated in Table 1) from users. The questionnaire was translated into the local language (Oromo language).
The qualitative data were also collected from key informant interviews, focus group discussion and observation of the water points. Observation was employed to assess the functionality of sample rural drinking water points. The data collection was carried out with full consent of the respondents. Upon making the purpose of the data collection (research purpose) clear, data were collected from the respondents with their full knowledge and agreement.

Method of data analysis
The descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and regression analysis were employed to analyse the data.
Since the dependent variable is a dichotomy (operational sustainability/functional and non-sustainability/not functional), binary models (logit or probit) are used. For simplicity and easy interpretation, the researchers preferred binary logistic regression model to predict the effects of independent variables on the dependent variable.

Specification of the model
The dependent variable (functionality, i.e., operational sustainability of the rural drinking water point/sustainability of RDWP) is dichotomous with two values, 1 if the water point is functioning and 0 otherwise. Based on Gujarati (), the model can obtain the following equation: In the logistic distribution equation, P i is the probability of rural drinking water point's sustainability; Xi is a set of explanatory variables of the i th user; β 0 and β 1 are the parameters to be estimated.
Equation (2) (the probability of sustainability of the water point) is obtained: The possibility of non-functionality (1 À P i ) can be depicted in Equation (3) as follows: From the above two equations, the odds ratio in favour of sustainable of RDWP could thus be: The logit model uses logarithmic transformation to assume linearity of the outcome variable on the explanatory variables. The logit model could thus be expressed as: If the disturbance term u i is considered in the general logit model with a set of variables, the equation becomes: X 1 ,X 2 , … X n are independent (explanatory) variables affecting operational sustainability of RDWPs. The explanatory variables are listed in Table 1 below.
The variables were selected based on previous empirical studies in the field. In this regard, other variables such as queuing time at the water point, type of management model and type of technology (pump) were considered.
However, queuing time at the water point was found to

Characteristics of respondents
From the total 211 respondents, about 71% were males, while 29% of them were females. The mean age was 43, while the maximum and minimum ages were 85 and 23, respectively. The majority of respondents (47%) were in between 39 and 54 years of age. Sixty-five per cent had received formal education, whereas 29% were illiterate and 6% were exposed to some form of non-formal education. The average household size was five, with maximum and minimum sizes of ten and one, respectively.
Water points' status in the woreda  (2), spring on spot (51), hand dug well (122) and spring distribution (44). Among these drinking water points, the office assumes that 85% of the water points in the woreda are operationally sustainable. This study crosschecked the recordings of the woreda by actually asking the users. The operational functionality of the water points were recorded as reported by users and, as depicted in Figure 2, some of the water points were observed physically by the researcher as well. From the total users surveyed, 62% of the users indicated that the water points that they use are functioning, whereas 38% of them reported that the water points they are using were not functioning at the time of data collection. This result significantly differs from the expectation of the woreda office of water services (assuming that 85% of the water points are functioning and 86% of the population has access). This is mainly because of the low level of monitoring activities by the woreda office and lack of budget for the operation and maintenance of the water points.
Factors affecting the operational sustainability of rural drinking water points As shown below in Table 2  Although the woreda office of water services puts the  Table 2. In order to see the relative importance of these variables, a dominance analysis was carried out following the procedure provided by Azen & Traxel (). Accordingly, water fee is found to be the most important factor followed by willingness to pay for the maintenance of water points, while participation in training is the least important among the significant explanatory variables. The details are presented in Table 2. found that sustainabillity of rural drinking water points is highly dependent on water fee. This is a plausible result in the sense that fees cover operational and maintenance costs of the water points.

Willingness to pay
The socioeconomic status of the users in the study area is different, and the same applies to the willingness to pay for the operation and maintenance of water points.
Users were asked how much they are willing to pay per month to keep the functionality of their respective water points. The users indicated they would pay an average of 6.24ETB/month, with a maximum of 15ETB per month. There were also a few users who stated they would pay nothing at all. The average willingness to pay among users that have access to functional water points is 7.11ETB/month, and this figure is significantly higher than the average willingness to pay (4.85ETB/month) among users residing around non-functional water points. This is an indication that water points' sustainability is better among users who are willing to pay more as their payment could help to cover the operational and maintenance costs associated with the water points. The regression result also implies the same. User's willingness to pay for the water service is found to be a positive and statistically significant ( p < 0.001) factor that determines operational sustainability of the water points. The prob-

Occurrence of conflict at the water points
This factor is found to be a statistically significant (p < 0.01) factor that affects the operational sustainability of RDWPs negatively. The likelihood of sustainability with the occurrence of conflict in the water points is 0.213 lower than those with water points with no incidence of conflict. The marginal effect of this variable is À0.363, implying that the probability of operational sustainability of water points decreases by 36.3% with the prevalence of conflict in the service points. It was also revealed in FGD that conflicts usually occur during queuing time (line ups of jerrycans as seen in Figure 3) at the water points, particularly in the water points where the number of households using drinking water from the same water points is high. Whenever conflict occurs there is a probability of breaking the mechanical system (pumping) of the water points. Similarly, water points that provide service to a larger number of users tend to wear out due to pressure on the mechanical system of the water points.
Unless addressed on time, these reasons deter the sustainability of the water schemes.

Monitoring by water user committee
Monitoring of the DWPs by water user committees is found to increase the probability of operational sustainability of the water points significantly (p < 0.01) with odds ratio of 3.63. The marginal effect of this variable is 0.28, implying that the probability of sustainability increases by 28% when the scheme is monitored by water user committees.
Monitoring by water user committee essentially plays an important role by allowing the members to detect problems and defects in the water points so that decisions can be taken on time. They may also hold regular meetings and discussion about the quality, service and maintenance of the points, and report the status to users or the community.
Such discussions essentially contribute to the sustenance of the water points by allowing the committee and the community to respond to problems observed at the water points. participation. This clearly indicates that participation during project implementation increases the sense of ownership for the participants so that they manage, monitor and maintain the rural drinking water points, thus enhancing their operational sustainability.

Satisfaction with the water point service
Satisfaction is also found to be a statistically significant (p < high likely that they will be willing to cover the costs of running the schemes and to serve on water users' committees. When water schemes are installed in the vicinities of users, it reduces the time spent fetching water from streams and rivers. In addition, water points provide safe water as compared to the water from streams and rivers. Water points provide clean water throughout the year while streams and rivers are flooded in the rainy season, making them dirty. This makes water points viable sources of clean water even in the rainy season. Due to these reasons, there is a very high likelihood of satisfaction among users on the services of water points (as far as the points continue to function and satisfy users' water demand).

Perception on the possibility of contamination
Perception on the possibility of contamination is another factor found to be statistically significant (p < 0.1) but negatively affecting the operational sustainability of the water points with odds ratio of 0.47. The marginal effect of the variable is negative with a magnitude of 0.161, implying decrement of the probability of sustainability by 16.1% when users perceive the possibility of contamination at the water points. In rural water schemes, besides household usage, animals drink water at the water points, as can be seen in Figure 4. The discussion with FGD revealed that there is minimum follow up and support from the woreda water experts in cleaning the water point on time. Key informants also stated that in such cases households develop the sense of the possibility of contamination in the water points so that they might pay little attention to its sustainability.
The researcher also observed cattle drinking water at the water points and contamination of some of the water points with animal faeces.

Training on maintenance
As expected, training on maintenance is found to be a statistically significant (p < 0.05) factor that affects operational sustainability of RDWPs positively with odds ratio of 6.143. The odds ratio result indicates that the likelihood of sustainability increases by 6.143 when users are trained on maintenance of the water points. In terms of percentage, the probability of sustainability increases by 42.5% when users are trained on maintenance of the water points as compared to non-trained users. This finding is in accordance with previous studies conducted by Welle & Williams () and Katz & Sara (), who found that training to users and water committees played an important role in ensuring the sustainability of rural drinking water points. Training provides users with the knowledge and skill that helps them manage, monitor and maintain the water points. It is particularly important since plumbers who repair water points are almost absent in rural areas of Ethiopia. Thus, training helps users to take the responsibility of servicing the schemes on time and before the schemes are damaged badly and go beyond maintenance. In addition, training helps to raise the awareness of users as regards to safe and clean water. For the sake of safe water, users can work towards maintaining the functionality of the water schemes.

CONCLUSION
Although the government of Ethiopia has done a lot and invested in rural water schemes, more than 33.3% of the water points are not functioning at any one time. With this observation, this study investigated factors affecting the sustainability of rural drinking water points in rural Kebles of Woliso woreda. It is found that 62% of rural drinking water points are functional and 38 of them are non-functional. It is also found that water service fee, willingness to pay, occurrence of conflict in the water points, monitoring by water user committees, willingness to sustain service, users' participation in the water point construction, satisfaction with the water point service, perception on the possibility of contamination, and training on maintenance are the major factors that affect the operational sustainability of rural drinking water schemes. It is therefore very important to consider users' participation in constructing water schemes so as to develop a sense of ownership among users, which in turn, increases the operational sustainability of the water points. In addition, introducing some affordable level of service fee is essential to sustain the water points. These practices should also be supported by the provision of functional training to users and water user committees on the management and maintenance of the water schemes. Equipping the community with knowledge and skill enables the community to properly monitor and manage the schemes, and solve problems and conflicts that arise in the water points.
Doing so enhances the operational sustainability of rural drinking water points which are constructed with large amounts of finance that come from competing investment sectors and the meagre income of developing countries like Ethiopia.