Assessing the support of transition management to governance of WASH services in Kampala’s urban informal settlements

Abstract

Uganda’s capital city Kampala is a fast growing urbanity, faced with increasing informal settlements attributed to growing population driven by rural urban migration. Despite the rapid growing urbanisation of Kampala, its informal settlements continue to suffer poor access to basic services like water, sanitation and waste management. Poor access to these basic services has been attributed to low incomes, insecure tenure, low literacy levels, difficult landscape transient, populations, poor governance, poor management, policy and regulatory frameworks to mention but few. Grassroots decision making centres are not recognized by the formal structures of water, sanitation and waste management, creating a disconnect between water policy and water users and bringing into question, the inclusiveness and participatory nature of the process of water, sanitation and waste management policy formulation. To explore and obtain an understanding of the issues at grassroots level, T-Group Uganda designed a research and intervention project that worked with the population to investigate and work on issues affecting quality of water, sanitation and waste disposal mechanisms in informal settings of Kampala city, specifically Kawempe division. The study was founded in applied research and a qualitative approach was adopted to observe and capture resident’s impression of water management in the community. A public policy dialogue was organised at Uganda Management Institute through the Uganda Policy Development and Management Forum to validate T-Group’s findings and policy recommendations informed by their research and interventions. The research indicated that the social, technical, political and economic changes were needed to sustainably improve management, quality and utilization of WASH services for residents of urban informal settlements in Kampala.

This investigation calls for revision of the contemporary policy framework to: recognize and regulate informal actors in management of water, sanitation and waste disposal in informal urban settings; identify and utilize socialization processes in community to introduce new behavior, reorient technical personnel to effectively interact with users of WASH services and make water, sanitation and waste disposal services affordable to urban poor populations.