Ensuring good practices in WASH governance can sometimes be challenging, especially if there isn’t a good strategy and guidance to ensure that services reach those people that need them. I recently conducted an action learning exercise in lomule, a village parish in Bombo town council. This was aimed at monitoring the promises made by the service providers, water user committees and the community during a citizen report card exercise that was conducted three month ago.
Just like most learning meetings, your expectations are on the big picture where people strike on the head and leave no stone unturned. The other question that probably strikes is where should we focus our priorities? The action learning meeting tasked people (service providers, water users and the committees) to report on progress with regards to commitments made. These will further trigger action on the priority areas which would invoke immediate response.
During the two day learning sessions, two things kept on springing up; repairing of a spring and buying more pipes for the borehole. I guess like many of the WASH projects its quite hard to tell where a priority should be put unless invoked by community voices. People asked for immediate repair of the spring at lomule south which according to the water quality test report contained a lot of Ecoli and other things but seemed cheaper to use. Other few members of the community felt it was necessary to start with the borehole since it was clean and had easy access. At the end of it all they agreed to start with the lomule spring.
The inevitable mark in all this is having proper WASH governance structures where community members are aware of their roles and responsibilities and community voices are of impact in WASH governance.
Sekumapter-Develop & Deliver 