Rural water service provision by municipalities and CBOs: Performance milestones and KPIs

Abstract

The advantages of using Community Based Organisations for the provision of water services in rural areas have been advocated for some time. These benefits have always been intuitively known, however there is little documentation assessing the real experiences of applying this model of service provision on a large scale within the South African context. This paper describes a process of identifying appropriate targets and monitoring standards that have been implemented in a number of areas in the Eastern Cape where a co-operative approach between Municipalities, CBOs and the private sector has been adopted.

In the absence of readily available performance and costing benchmarks it has proved difficult to compare the tender proposals and indeed the delivery of services from all role-players. A series of cost estimating tools and responsibility milestones have been developed through an empirical process of critically analysing our experiences and developing an operational model from first principles. These milestones are defined in terms of developing the CBO to take on more and more responsibility, as far as is possible, while ensuring an appropriate and cost effective level of service.

The paper will present a number of options that take into account the relative capacity of municipalities and any development process that they may be planning for their own organisation. Critical to the model is that effective delivery of service must be ensured from the start and that any transition as milestones are reached, should be as seamless as possible. Furthermore a series of operational performance indicators and benchmarks are proposed.

Water SA Vol.30(5)Special 2004: 549-554