Assessing Community Participation In Managing Drinking Water Supply Facilities: The Case of Nedjo Woreda, West Wellega Zone, Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia.

Abstract

Good management of drinking water supply facility is an important factor in ensuring access to safe water but there are different factors that hinder community participation on managing and protecting different water supply facilities and this study was conducted to identify the different factors that affect community participation on managing water supply facilities and to examine extent of their participation in the study area. The result of the study is intended to help stakeholders and planners to devise new solution that enhance communities participation in managing water source that can ensure sustainability of quality water consumption. In order to achieve these objectives a cross sectional survey design was conducted. The quantitative data were collected from 200 randomly selected households in the study area and they were stratified into participant and non-participant. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, percentage and frequency distribution. T-test and Chi-square tests were also employed to describe their characteristics. The result shows that among eight independent variables hypothesized, four of them were significant at less than 10 % probability level. These are:sex of household head, family size, awareness on importance of water source management, participating in water source management, training, amount of water consumption and being member of water committee. Thus, designing appropriate strategy to increase community participation, creating awareness on importance of water source management, provide training on managing drinking water supply facilities and encouraging women participation in managing water source should be take into account.

Keywords: Water, Community Participation, Facility, management.