Evaluating the Level of the Household Water Service Provided by a Private Water Enterprise in Ghana
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Oklahoma, 202 W. Boyd St, Norman, OK 73019, USA
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Water 2020, 12(3), 693; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030693
Received: 15 January 2020
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Revised: 20 February 2020
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Accepted: 22 February 2020
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Published: 3 March 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Present and Future of Drinking Water Supplies in Low-Income Regions)
Innovative service delivery models are attempting to more consistently provide clean water to communities in developing countries. It is imperative that these approaches be evaluated for their performance in these contexts while understating potential consequences. A private service delivery model in Ghana utilizing solar-powered water treatment, circuit rider principles, pre-paid metering, and a district-wide approach was assessed for three years. A quasi-experimental design used key informant surveys, household surveys, and water quality testing to investigate the service received by households under various management schemes. Service indicators were compared using logistic regression analysis. Private customers were shown to have significantly improved quality, annual reliability, and satisfaction ratings (p < 0.05) compared with control households, while maintaining the quantity of water collected. However, private customers were more reliant upon multiple water sources to meet domestic needs and suffered from lower affordability scores. About 38% of households used private water services, with no significant relationship with socioeconomic class. It is important for policy-makers and implementers to understand that some people will be unwilling or unable to take advantage of this model, and a transition from free improved sources to paid piped schemes will likely require a period of supporting both systems in order to reach everyone.
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Keywords:
rural water supply; service delivery models; Sub-Saharan Africa; equity; financial sustainability
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MDPI and ACS Style
Deal, P.; Sabatini, D. Evaluating the Level of the Household Water Service Provided by a Private Water Enterprise in Ghana. Water 2020, 12, 693. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030693
AMA Style
Deal P, Sabatini D. Evaluating the Level of the Household Water Service Provided by a Private Water Enterprise in Ghana. Water. 2020; 12(3):693. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030693
Chicago/Turabian StyleDeal, Philip, and David Sabatini. 2020. "Evaluating the Level of the Household Water Service Provided by a Private Water Enterprise in Ghana" Water 12, no. 3: 693. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030693
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