Chapter Six

Rural Water Supply and Transport

6.1. Rural water supply: problems and challenges in Ethiopia

Supplying enough potable water to the rural population is one of the primary development tasks that
should be carried out in order to ensure health services based on prevention an, thereby, create
healthy and productive citizens. Ensuring supply of drinking water means reducing significantly
health related expenditures, in addition to the promotion of the general happiness and wellbeing of
the population derived from being healthy, and the improvement of the standard of living of the
people. Further, the availability of the clean water helps to promote personal and domestic hygiene,
to expand various types of local service rendering institutions and in general to foster regional and
local development. Also, availability of clean water at close quarters greatly reduces the work burden
on women. The supply of clean water to the rural population should be high on the list of government
development priorities.

In order to expand the supply of potable water in rural Ethiopia possible, there is need to employ
labor intensive methods that do not require huge amounts of capital expenditures. In this aspect,
improving springs, digging water holes that are rather shallow, and purification of river water and the
like are alternatives that need to be considered. Those who can obtain enough drinking water at low
costs should get it in the shortest time possible.

From the point of view of equity, the objective should be to make drinking water available to as large
a population as possible with the available limited resources, and not to spend large sums of money
on a single kebele when the same expenditure can finance drinking water projects for 3 to 4 kebeles.
Notwithstanding this objective, priority should be given, in drinking water supply development, to
localities which are selected as kebele development centers, as they are administrative and service-
rendering regional hubs with expectedly high rates of growth. The drinking water development
programs should be in keeping with the expected pace of growth in these centers.

While maintaining the principle of focusing on labor intensive and low cost drinking water
development strategies, it is important at the same time to be cognizant of the fact that there are
kebeles that cannot get potable water through these strategies. Special programs should be designed
for such kebeles, and they should obtain drinking water services when it is their turn to do so. Here,
too, priority should be given to kebele development centers. Water supply systems should be
constructed in proximity to residential areas and at locations suitable for water transport.

The problem of repair and maintenance is prevalent in drinking water supply projects as well. There
are a considerable number of instances in which pipes are broken or otherwise damaged, and the
water becomes contaminated. The problems associated with repair and maintenance and with
ownership observed in water supply programs are the major ones worth mentioning. These problems
should be satisfactorily tackled, if to expand drinking water supply services as fast as the situation
permits.

In order to solve this problem, the questions of ownership should first be addressed. The de facto
owners of these drinking water services are the people who live in the localities concerned, be the
villages, parishes, etc. It will be the responsibility of kebele administrations to control and coordinate
the services given by some official administrative unit. As is observed in certain regions, it may be
useful to set up a water committee composed of members elected from writing the concerned people
at large.

As experience in regions where there are such committees show that better results are achieved when
most of the committee members are women. As women bear the responsibility for fetching water at
the family level, it is believed that they are in a better position to handle the water supply work at the
kebele or district level as well. It would also be a good idea to keep watch over water supply points
by hiring guards whenever this is affordable.

The water committee and hired guards have the responsibility of ensuring that the water supply is
clean and that the necessary repair and maintenance is carried out. The costs necessary for repair and
maintenance should be covered by users. Hence, users will obtain more benefit out of the clean
drinking water services when they are made to have a stake in them through the payment for modest
user changes. The payment may be on the basis of the amount of water drawn at the site of the water
supply. This will work particularly where there are hired workers. Alternatively, the payment may be
effected by levying a fixed monthly fee on each user family. The main objective is to establish
ownership of the water supply, create a repair and maintenance system, levy modest user changes to
ensure the viability of the whole project and improve it on the basis of regular assessment.
The problems encountered in the effort to expand drinking water services are associated with:

Identifying low cost water supply projects,

Follow up of their implementation,
Making available skilled technicians for repair and maintenance who are not available in the
particular localities in question and
Improvement of the entire water supply services on the basis of regular assessment
Rural drinking water supply services can be expanded only if it is possible to succeed in creating such
technical capacities in each woreda. The technical training required for studying low cost water
supply services, which can be built by labor intensive methods, for determining their building sites
and for following up their construction work should be identified and given to trainees who could
then be deployed accordingly. Likewise, technical expertise needed to repair and maintain water
supply systems, which is beyond the capacity of localities, should be developed and used. Such
technical expertise at the woreda level should be used to expand, improve and monitor water supply
services in the concerned localities. Woredas will have the right to request higher bodies to perform
tasks related to water supply services which are beyond their technical capacities.

6.2. The role of transport in rural development

It is unthinkable to realize market based agricultural development in the absence of efficient road and
transport services. The supply of various development services to rural areas is possible only when
there is an efficient road and transport system. Hence, the expansion of road and transport services is
one of the key development measures that must be taken to promote accelerate and sustainable
agricultural development.

When the issue of expanding road and transport services is discussed, there is one fundamental point
that should not be forgotten. Rural roads become significant only when they can connect various
regions to important national political and economic centers and to the global market in general.
Rural roads become useful when they are part of the national road network. In the absence of an
efficient network of highways, the expansion of rural roads will have little significance for
development. It is on the basis of this principle that the Federal Government concentrates on building
main roads and highways. The idea behind this objective is not to build an equal length of roads in
each region, but rather to create an efficient countrywide network of road arteries. That is why the
task of building an efficient national network of main roads in any region is beneficial to all the
people living in any part of the country.

While the Federal Government builds main roads that connect all regions of the country to important
political and economic centers and to the global market in as equitable manner as possible, regional
administrations on their part should construct rural roads which connect rural areas to these main
roads. Even then, the government has the responsibility of building main roads in regions that are not
likely to be growth centers on their own in order to open them up for development.

This is not something that should be done haphazardly, but rather a task that should be performed
according to a well designed plan. It should have its own development priorities. First, woreda level
centers should be connected to main roads. Then, kebeles should be connected to woreda centers and
main roads. Kebeles, with high population density and in which roads can be constructed with
relative ease, should be given priority. Roads connecting Kebles to woreda development centers and
main roads should lead to selected kebele development centers where schools, health posts, etc., are
being constructed.

Rural roads are assigned grades on the basis of the number of motor vehicles they can carry. Roads
which can accommodate from 10 to 50 motor vehicles per day are designated as rural roads. The
construction costs depend on their respective grades. One of the problems encountered in the rural
road construction program is the practice of building rural roads for traffic of 30–50 motor vehicles
per day when in actual fact there is no more traffic than 10 motor vehicles per week. This deficiency
is wasteful in terms of scarce financial resources, and is also an obstacle to the attainment of the
objective of expanding rural roads of the right grade in all rural areas of the country, and it should,
therefore, be quickly corrected.

When constructing rural roads, the start should be made with low grade roads unless it can be
ascertained that there is heavy traffic. When such low grade rural roads are built, account should be
taken of the possibility of increased motor traffic in the future, and should be upgraded when the need
arises. In this way, it is possible to adequately expand rural roads in all the rural parts of the country
in a relatively short time. Out of the low grade rural roads built, there is need to upgrade those on
which motor traffic has increased. Thus low grade rural roads could be upgraded to become high
grade asphalt roads.
Rural roads can be expanded within a relatively short period of time when labor intensive
construction methods are employed and when appropriate construction designs can be drawn up. In
addition, the follow-up and supervision of the construction work should not require more than middle
level personnel. Another related problem has to do with the drawing up of road construction designs
that require capital intensive approach and highly trained professionals and experts. Hence, there is a
need to develop on the basis of the experiences of other countries and local experiences, the practice
of preparing rural road construction designs that can be implemented using labor intensive
technologies.

Another problem associated with rural road construction is the problem of repair and maintenance.
Lack or repair and maintenance causes rural roads to be out of use within a short period of time. If
there is no system that ensures proper and timely repair and maintenance, there is no point in building
rural roads in the first place, as it would amount to destroying what has been constructed at
considerable cost. The question of road ownership should be addressed if a satisfactory solution is to
be found to this problem. The de facto owners of rural roads should be the people who live in the
regions and localities where these roads are found. In addition to actively participating in the
construction of these roads, the local people should take the responsibility for the repair and
maintenance of the roads as de facto owners.

The concerned people should realize the importance of this task and should cooperate in
accomplishing the work out of conviction and commitment. Kebele leaders should assume the
responsibility of implementing this task and mobilizing and coordinating the efforts of the local
people to that end. They should also attempt to put in practice a transparent and efficient road repair
and maintenance system.

It is not enough to indicate that kebeles should be connected to woreda development centers and main
roads. The grades of rural roads to be constructed should be consistent with the density of motor
traffic, and labor – intensive methods should be employed in rural road construction. In addition, the
capacity to design such roads and monitor their construction and to give technical services and
training to the people, so that they can satisfactorily shoulder the responsibility of repairing and
maintaining these roads and supervising the related work, should be created and developed. This
capacity should be created in woredas as soon as possible, and to this end the type of training
required should be identified and the necessary personnel should be trained.
In Ethiopia, transportation is associated with motor vehicles or pack animals or human load.
Although there are several other alternatives these have not been developed to the desired
degree. Even if the mode of transport could be improved significantly by using carts or wagons
drawn by horses or donkeys, the practice is not common in rural Ethiopia, except in few places.
Similarly, the use of bicycles or motor bicycles is not common outside urban areas. One cannot
expand transport services unless one is able to use all these alternatives. Keble and woreda
officials should, therefore, encourage the participation of private entrepreneurs and cooperatives
in the expansion of carts and wagons and other alternative modes of transport.