Attachments
Briefing paper 14 August 2015
Key messages
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Most rural areas of Nepal still do not have clean and safe drinking water facilities. Only 3.5% of the 716 households surveyed by SLRC could access drinking water at home.
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A range of state and non-state actors are involved in supplying water. The different providers lack consistency and in general, respondents were dissatisfied with the amount they are charged.
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In spite of more local involvement, without political influence communities still felt they were less likely to get the budget they needed to secure an efficient water supply.
According to Nepal’s Water and Energy Commission Secretariat, more than one in four (28%) Nepalese people do not have access to a basic water supply, while three in four (75%) have no sanitation facilities. The gap in provision between rural and urban areas is large, with urban areas significantly better off. Most rural areas of Nepal still do not have clean and safe drinking water facilities.
Following the ending of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency in 2006, the Government of Nepal sought to involve communities more directly in local governance, perhaps mindful that the state’s poor performance in delivering basic services had been one of the causes of the decade-long conflict. In the water sector, autonomous bodies such as District Water Resource Committees (DWRCs) and Drinking Water Management Committees (DWMCs) were created at local level to enable greater community participation.
The Nepal Centre for Contemporary Research (NCCR) examined drinking water provision as part of its contribution to the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium.
SLRC is an eight-country, six-year research programme investigating how people in places affected by conflict make a living and access basic services such as education, health, water; social protection; and livelihood services. NCCR’s research focussed on Rolpa District, an under-developed area in Nepal’s mid-western region and a major flashpoint of the Maoist insurgency. It aimed to assess how changes to local water management had affected people’s access to drinking water, and any resultant impact on local people’s perceptions of local and central government.