Water and sanitation service delivery, pricing, and the poor: An empirical estimate of subsidy incidence in Nairobi, Kenya

Fuente, David; Gatua, Josephine; Ikiara, Moses; Kabubo-Mariara, Jane; Mwaura, Mbutu; Whittington, Dale

doi:10.1002/2015wr018375

Cited by 54 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The conclusion recommended the following; the poor to receive connections, subsidies, public taps, and recognition of water vending including control of private operators. Recent scholars on the same issue like [133] [134] added their voice on the same theme by stating that the water tariff structure must contain, use volume, service level type, unit cost, waste service, tariff structure and socio-economic status of the user.…”

Section: Related Work On the Implication Of Unreliable Water Supplymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Implication of Unreliable Urban Water Supply Service: The Case of Vendor Water Cost in Langata Sub County, Nairobi City, Kenya

Ochungo¹,

Ouma²,

Obiero³

et al. 2019

JWARP

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Studies on urban water supply service improvements continue to draw interest across the world. The pressure on freshwater resources is increasing in every region in the face of an increasing demand and climate change dynamics. Langata sub County in Nairobi city, Kenya faces drought induced water shortage and households rely on water vending and bottled water purchases to augment the inadequate municipal water supplies. Little to our knowledge has been done to assess the cost implication of such a practice here. So the study used household survey method to collect monthly households' water bills comprising; utility company, water tanker delivery and bottled water purchase from a randomly sampled 382 households spread within the five wards; Karen, South C, Mugumoini, Nairobi West and Nyayo Highrise. The gated communities identified are 57. Simple stochastic analysis of the data was done after data cleaning using MS Excel. It was found that the municipal water serves up to 91.15% of the total average household monthly water demand with a cost share of 27.91%. Water tanker delivery meets 8.61% of the household water demand with a cost share of 50.74%. The bottled water purchases serve 0.24% of a typical household water demand with a total cost share of 21.35%. The water supply deficit which is a mere 8.85% met by tanker deliveries and bottled water purchases has a total average cost share of 72.09%. The computed cost burden is 258%. This means that the households pay more than two and a half times extra above the utility bill per month. The study recommends a new water policy that will incorporate the role of water vendors operated on a cooperative model by the gated communities using standard guidelines. How to cite this paper: Ochungo, E.A., Journal of Water Resource and Protection vulnerability of public water supply systems to impacts of climate variability [26] [27] [28].Accordingly, households nowadays do supplement with vended water transported by one or a number of these methods: head-ported or hand-held water containers [29], walking tractors, bicycles, hand-carts/donkey carts [30] [31], motorbikes and owner-managed water access systems for a home or a community [32]. One other popular coping strategy is buying from neighbors; a practice found in Accra city, Ghana according to [33]. Such daily distressful struggles for water access service makes urban dualism concept real as the beneficiaries are known to be living in urban settings with on-site water utility infrastructure [34] [35]. Further, the selection of a choice of water source with a suitable quality is not easy [36]. Despite the prevailing choice quandary, water vendors serve about 10% -69% of households in developing nations' cities [37]. On the other hand, selling of water to customers is a very important economic activity to the vendors [38]. That is why they always choose to ignore repugnant waterscape labels like 'mafias' as in Bangalore city, India [39].

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Section: Related Work On the Implication Of Unreliable Water Supplymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Implication of Unreliable Urban Water Supply Service: The Case of Vendor Water Cost in Langata Sub County, Nairobi City, Kenya

Ochungo¹,

Ouma²,

Obiero³

et al. 2019

JWARP

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“…Hence, this paper explores these three ID pillars of governance approaches: (A) social, (B) environmental and (C) relational (Gupta et al, 2015;Gupta & Vegelin, 2016), linking them to six WatSan indicators: (A.1) access to minimum WSS (as a right) (Appelblad Fredby & Nilsson, 2013;Bisung et al, 2016), (A.2) access to WSS even if the urban poor do not have formal housing (Obrist et al, 2006;Appelblad Fredby & Nilsson, 2013), (B.1) domestic wastewater collection and treatment (Heller, 2009;Oteng-Ababio, 2014), (B.2) water availability (for WSS delivery) Giatti et al, 2013;Heller, 2015), (C.1) participation (of the urban poor) (Obrist et al, 2006;Bisung et al, 2016) and (C.2) low-income WSS subsidies (Attari & van Dijk, 2016;Fuente et al, 2016). The indicators selected potentially address exclusion, reflecting key issues of concern to the urban poor (Obrist et al, 2006;Oteng-Ababio, 2014;Chimankar, 2016;Murungi & Blokland, 2016b).…”

Section: Inclusive Discourses Inclusive Development Dimensions and Wmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public water supply and sanitation policies and inclusive development of the urban poor in Brazil

et al. 2019

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Poorly designed policies jeopardise ecosystems and their services and the expansion of basic services to vulnerable populations. In the water and sanitation (WatSan) sector, inadequate access of the urban poor to formal and public drinking water supply and sanitation services (WSS) calls for more inclusive policies. Inclusive development (ID) has social, environmental and relational dimensions. However, there is little research on operationalising ID dimensions in WatSan policy discourse analysis. Hence, this paper addresses: How can we elaborate on indicators for inclusive WatSan policies? How can these be applied to assess the design of Brazilian WatSan policies? It examines the literature on ID and WatSan, develops and applies an analytical framework with six indicators to assess ID in WSS through policy analysis: access to minimum WSS; access to WSS even if the urban poor do not have formal housing; domestic wastewater collection/treatment; water availability; participation; and WSS subsidies for low-income people. Comparison between two Brazilian WatSan policies shows that the current WatSan law scores higher on ID than the previous law but neglects key aspects of social, environmental and relational ID dimensions. The selected indicators were useful to operationalise ID in WatSan policy discourse analysis and can boost policy design assessment elsewhere.

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“…[] included multiple or nonlinear tariffs, while 74% of water utilities in developing countries use IBT schemes according to Fuente et al . []. Understanding the role played by the functional form in the determination of price elasticity is relevant to policy makers for the development of water policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasing block tariff (IBT) schemes are very common in the literature. For instance, more than 40% of the studies reported by Dalhuisen et al [2003] included multiple or nonlinear tariffs, while 74% of water utilities in developing countries use IBT schemes according to Fuente et al [2016]. Understanding the role played by the functional form in the determination of price elasticity is relevant to policy makers for the development of water policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional forms and price elasticities in a discrete continuous choice model of the residential water demand

Lavín

Hernández

Oliva

et al. 2017

Water Resources Research

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During recent decades, water demand estimation has gained considerable attention from scholars. From an econometric perspective, the most used functional forms include log‐log and linear specifications. Despite the advances in this field and the relevance for policymaking, little attention has been paid to the functional forms used in these estimations, and most authors have not provided justifications for their selection of functional forms. A discrete continuous choice model of the residential water demand is estimated using six functional forms (log‐log, full‐log, log‐quadratic, semilog, linear, and Stone‐Geary), and the expected consumption and price elasticity are evaluated. From a policy perspective, our results highlight the relevance of functional form selection for both the expected consumption and price elasticity.

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Water and sanitation service delivery, pricing, and the poor: An empirical estimate of subsidy incidence in Nairobi, Kenya

Cited by 54 publications

References 25 publications

The Implication of Unreliable Urban Water Supply Service: The Case of Vendor Water Cost in Langata Sub County, Nairobi City, Kenya

The Implication of Unreliable Urban Water Supply Service: The Case of Vendor Water Cost in Langata Sub County, Nairobi City, Kenya

Public water supply and sanitation policies and inclusive development of the urban poor in Brazil

Functional forms and price elasticities in a discrete continuous choice model of the residential water demand

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