| dc.description.abstract | The study sought to establish the households’ access to water and sanitation among the urban poor in Kisumu’s informal settlements in the context of a water intervention project (The Wandiege Community Water Supply Project in Manyatta B, herein also referred to as The Wandiege Project). The objectives of the research were: to describe Wandiege Community Water Supply Project ; to determine the status of access to water and sanitation among intervention households (Wandiege Connected and Wandiege Unconnected) and non intervention households (Bandani) and finally to determine the effect of the Wandiege Project on the households it served. To guide in achieving these objectives, the study used two null hypotheses: (1) the cost accessing water had no effect on the cost of food and (2) the number of persons sharing one sanitation facility had no effect on the number of water borne diseases that had occurred in the year.
Data was obtained using the questionnaire as the main data collection instrument from which a sample of 123 households was drawn (Wandiege Connected-34 households; Wandiege Unconnected 29- households; Bandani 60 households) using mixed sampling approach. The data was subjected to both exploratory and inferential statistical analyses. The exploratory techniques were used in providing accurate description of the sample data in terms of frequency distribution tables while inferential statistics of Spearmar^s Rank correlation were used as a measure of association of different parameters. Statistical tests in all cases were at a = 0.05 (95%) confidence level.
The results showed that Wandiege Connected and Wandiege Unconnected households had access to potable water unlike their Bandani counterparts. However, all households accessed severely contaminated water as their -alternative source during water shortages. Wandiege Connected households were better in terms of access to water and sanitation facilities as compared to Wandiege Unconnected and Bandani households. For example, water collection time was 7 minutes for Wandiege Connected households as compared to 31 minutes for Wandiege Unconnected households and 42 minutes for Bandani households; per capita water consumption was 28.7 liters for Wandiege Connected households as compared to 24.7 liters
among the Wandiege Unconnected households and 20.4 liters among Bandani households. In terms of access to sanitation facilities, there were less people sharing sanitation facilities among the Wandiege Connected households (48%) as compared to Wandiege Unconnected (61%) and Bandani (73%). There were also less incidences of water borne diseases in the year for Wandiege Connected households (13.7%) as compared to Wandiege Unconnected (29.4%) and Bandani households (41.6%).
The study concluded that Wandiege Connected households were better served in terms of access to water and sanitation in many respects as compared to Wandiege Unconnected and Bandani households. As far as access to water is concerned, an intervention that would provide individual piped water connections to households was better than one that availed water through kiosks as it would avail water at a price cheaper than that in areas without water interventions like Bandani. Reduced costs of water would in turn translate into nutritional benefits for the households. The study also concluded that access to more sanitation facilities was important in reducing incidences of water borne disease. Nutritional benefits from a cheaper water supply and health benefits from less incidences of water borne diseases would make a positive contribution toward households’ livelihoods.
The study made policy and research recommendations: in terms of policy, the study recommended (1) that policy makers should^ promote water interventions geared towards increasing individual piped water connections for the urban poor and (2) that policy makers should work towards increasing the number of sanitation facilities for the urban poor. The study made two research recommendations: (1) Further research should be conducted on the role of water for household livelihoods by concretizing the effect of water availability on each of the households’ capital assets: Physical, human, financial, social, natural and political assets and (2) Further research should also be conducted on various factors related to access to water and sanitation such as establishing the correlations between: water collection time and per capita water consumption; per capita water consumption and cost of water; willingness to pay for water supply improvements and water collection time; number of water borne diseases and sources of water; number of water borne diseases and per capita water consumption; and number of water borne diseases and rate of sensitization on use of sanitation facilities. | |
