Legal and institutional options for community management of water supplies in Kenya : a desk study

A lot of effort has been made in Kenya to strengthen the sustainability of rural water supplies through community management. However, a disparity in the level of participation from involvement in contributing labour and materials to full responsibility for all aspects of the water supply development and management suggests a lack of clarity regarding many issues of community management. According to government policy, communities will be expected to play a key role in all aspects of the development and future of rural water supplies. This study looks closely at the institutional and legal framework within which communities in Kenya can manage water supplies. The underlying hypothesis of the study is that in addition to mobilizing, training and motivating communities to take over water supplies, sustainability will be better achieved when the communities are organized in a manner that enables them to legally manage their own water systems. The areas selected for study are Kakamega and Meru in high potential, Siaya and Machakos in medium potential and Baringo, Kilifi and Kajiado in the low potential zones. This choice enables the study of different management systems in the three main ecological classification zones of the country. The water supplies in the study area have been classified by the type of technology and by management systems. Various Acts under which water management groups could be registered have been studied and their merits and limitations evaluated. Since no single Act seems to be ideal for community management of water supplies, the study proposes a combination of Acts as the best way to lead community groups from a present status, where they are not "legal persons", to full ownership of assets and liabilities. The study recommends that IEC should be an important component of project interventions aimed to improve community management; that the main objective of moving from self-help group to water association should be to get the group to prepare by-laws which will guide their operations and , in some cases, to qualify for external support or handing over; and that economic activities based on the water supplies should be allowed as an integral component if these are viable and therefore have a positive impact on sustainability.