Community involvement in the provision of basic sanitation services to informal settlements

Abstract

In South Africa, an estimated 15 million people - 38% of our population - do not have adequate sanitation. Every citizen has a constitutional right of access to basic services, which local government has the responsibility to provide. In reality such provision to people living in poverty is a daunting development challenge, exacerbated by growing unemployment and the spread of unplanned informal settlements. On the other hand, increased government investment in accelerating provision is a significant opportunity to link sanitation delivery to local economic development, as suggested in the recently revised Water Services Strategy document (DWAF, 2003). There is evidence that these two aspects of national policy can be brought together fruitfully. Community involvement, described as "a commitment to building on people's energy and creativity" (WSSCC, 2001) is consistently advocated by international, national and local government (DPLG, 2001) as essential to sanitation provision. There is broad agreement that a community-based approach is the cornerstone of sustainable service provision. This research focused on the context of urban poverty in informal settlements, taking community responses to sanitation delivery by local authorities into account. Prevailing approaches have had limited success in preventing health hazards, which relies on community-level actions to deal with poor use, inadequate maintenance and dysfunction of such sanitation services as are provided. Implicit in the principles underlying the involvement of communities are substantial community-based roles and functions that the research seeks to make explicit. Diverse local level capacities emerge as quite distinct opportunities for residents to become more actively involved in improving and sustaining their sanitation services.