Success factors for effective management of rural water schemes in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Many governments embraced the idea of changing from "providers to facilitators" And have become convinced that centralized systems cannot deliver the required services to the rural water sector. Hence the strong push towards decentralization that started in the late eighties and a growing trend to encourage rural communities to manage their water supply schemes. In any project there are several factors which influence the success of the project and those factors are considered as critical factors to the project. This study identifies and analyzes the critical factors which influence rural water schemes success in Sri Lankan context. Majority of the literature related to rural water schemes management have highlighted several factors, factor groups and sub factors related to rural water schemes success. This study identified the critical factors influencing the success of rural water supply schemes, examined different parameters of critical factors affect success, examined the awareness of different stakeholders of rural water sector regarding success and factors affecting to the success, examined the impact of identified critical factors for success and the recommendations in detail for rural water schemes success through the findings. The study came up with a conceptual model that depicts identified critical factors and factor groups, critical factors were further divided into variables and sub-variables and questionnaires were developed based on those variables. Questionnaires were distributed to random samples which represent rural water schemes implementing agencies, water management committees and beneficiaries. The research study used SPSS software to analyze the data which were collected through questionnaires. The results revealed that majority of the stakeholders are aware that most of the' factors are critical for rural water schemes success but there are some factors where stakeholders are not much aware that those are critical for project success. The findings of the study revealed that, economic factors and support infrastructures, skills and abilities of water management committee, leadership of Water management committee (CBO leadership), training and Capacity building ,coordination and backup support of implementing (supporting) agencies, transparency and responsibility of activities, motivation ,communication skills of implementing agency (supporting agency) staff, power and commitment of water management committees, Periodic monitoring and evaluation, community participation, personnel characteristics of water management committee members and external factors have significant influence on rural water schemes success