Richard Bagonza Asaba

Children and Domestic Water Collection in Uganda: Exploring Policy and Intervention Options that Promote Child Protection

This chapter is primarily based on a study conducted in a rural community in south-central Uganda in Makondo Parish, Ndagwe sub-county, Lwengo district. The study, which employed mixed methods, investigated household dynamics in collection, transportation and use of safe-drinking water. The study findings are complemented by additional interviews with children water collectors in a peri-urban context in Wakiso District that sought, among others, to capture voices and perspectives of children regarding their experiences in water transportation. Our findings confirm that the burden of collecting water for domestic use is almost exclusively a domain of children and their mothers or other female members of the household. The distances covered and the time spent in collecting water, the volumes and mode of transportation are all potentially hazardous to children’s physical and emotional health, which inadvertently have not been addressed by rural water policy and interventions. We argue for water supply options and service interventions that are consciously designed to sustainably address risks and vulnerabilities associated with water collection and transportation by children. Ensuring increased coverage of improved water sources within a distance of one and a half kilometers, promotion of rain water harvesting in communities, ensuring sustainable operation and maintenance of point-water sources as well as protection of open water sources are some of the supply related interventions that could address the burden of children in water transportation. It is not the intention of this chapter to promote child involvement in work, but rather, to advocate for a service delivery environment that not only lessens the physical burden of water collection for children but also other environmental and social risks associated with their ‘socially and culturally defined responsibility’ of water collection.

CHAPTER 2 - Women’s access to safe water and participation in community management of supply

Poverty is rife in Uganda in both urban and rural communities. This chapter outlines the situation for poor women securing water for their households in a rural village. It gives an account of poor women’s ‘fluid lives’ as they engage in efforts to secure water for their households and participate in water governance at community level where there are persistent water-related problems. The authors conducted a socio-economic study of households in a poor rural parish in order to better understand women’s safe water access and participation in the management of a healthy community water supply. The study findings confirm that gender remains an important analytical tool for identifying access issues, since gender relations and inequalities are evident in most of the mechanisms of access to water in this community. The chapter explores how women and children remain vulnerable to lack of access to safe water, even where there are community schemes and improved water sources in place, since for the most part powerful, formal positions such as village chairperson, water user committee member, and handpump mechanic continue to be held by men. This is despite the fact that, in the case of water user committees in particular, the 1999 National Water Policy stipulates that women should make up 50 per cent of such committees. In addition, payment arrangements, particularly maintenance and repair fees, frequently result in denying vulnerable children and women physical access to water resources whenever men, as household heads, do not pay these fees. Strategies which seek to improve women’s access to safe water and power in community organization of water remain essential.