ITINERARIO EMPEZANDO MARTES

We studied villages in the Cuzco Department of Peru that received a water project through either SAnBASuR or FonCoDeS. We tried to control for such differences among the villages in order to isolate the effects of post-construction support on the sustainability of water projects.

our study encountered some difficulties that limited our ability to make inferences and generalize our findings. In particular, many of the village water systems were performing better than expected, particularly in terms of physical measures such as the high percentages of taps that worked in villages and the relatively short lengths of time needed to make many repairs. This is good news for many villages, but the lack of variation among some of our dependent variables made it difficult to assess the importance of PCS.

As expected, SAnBASuR villages generally received more post-construction support than FonCoDeS villages. System operators in SAnBASuR villages received more technical support and training and a larger percentage of households in SAnBASuR villages received training after construction. This said, SAnBASuR villages did not receive extremely high levels of post- construction support, and FonCoDeS villages received more PCS than we had expected. ultimately, both the SAnBASuR and FonCoDeS systems provided for demand-driven PCS. SAnBASuR worked with and trained local municipalities and interlocutor ngos to provide post- construction support, but SAnBASuR villages had to request the support themselves. Additionally, because the SAnBASuR villages were much more remote than FonCoDeS villages, they

presumably had a harder time demanding PCS. Thus we observed lower levels of PCS in SAnBASuR villages than we had expected. In the FonCoDeS program, nothing inherently prevented villages from also requesting support (in some cases probably from the same municipal agencies that SAnBASuR had trained). There is also some evidence that FonCoDeS villages had demanded post-construction support in the form of spare parts and in-person visits from external agencies.

The facilities in both SAnBASuR and FonCoDeS projects were generally functioning well, with residents largely using private taps to obtain their water. SAnBASuR villages had slightly higher levels of consumer satisfaction than FonCoDeS villages. SAnBASuR villages had also achieved better financial performance than FonCoDeS villages—though only 16 percent of SAnBASuR water committees reported that they were collecting enough money to cover major repairs. SAnBASuR villagers also perceived that their systems would remain functional longer than did FonCoDeS villagers.

An examination of bivariate relationships shows that indicators of sustainability are only weakly affected by pre-construction factors, post-construction support, or other independent variables. This result is largely attributable to the lack of variation in the dependent variables. The bivariate analysis does suggest, however, that effective forms of PCS include household visits and types of support provided to water committees. (other measures of PCS such as system operator training do not emerge as significant indicators of sustainability.)

The results of our multivariate analysis show that village water supply systems in Cuzco are likely to be functioning whether or not they receive PCS. A surprising number of sampled communities had been delivering water on a consistent basis over moderate to even longer periods (10–15 years) without PCS. Many systems broke down, yet communities had often been able to mobilize their resources to get the systems running again. However, it is also clear that a smaller set of communities, whose water systems were not functioning as well, were demanding post-construction support more

frequently. This suggests that post-construction assistance would prove most beneficial to communities that are struggling with intermittent service, limited coverage, and frequent breakdowns.

Post-construction assistance is having some impact on the implementation of “user pays” principles of system financing: villages in which more households had received visits from external agencies were more likely to have users paying for water service. These findings are interesting because the reported purpose of many of these visits was not to coax households to pay for service; typically they featured hygiene education and “how-to” training for the use of household yard taps. yet the results suggest that households are more likely to value their water supply service if they are visited for these related purposes after construction. village-level PCS had neither reduced the incidence of non-payment nor encouraged cost recovery. only a few villages had received direct external financial or non-technical financial management assistance. given that households were paying less than uS$1 per month, on average, for service, it is not surprising if PCS had little influence on community financial practices. There appears to be a great deal of room for improvement in financial management at the village level.

Households in communities that had received both village and household-level forms of PCS were more satisfied than households in communities that did not receive both forms of assistance. While this is an important initial finding, we believe that more specific models, incorporating individual household factors, may improve the ability to predict individual user satisfaction among specific sets of attributes.

our models failed to generate meaningful estimates of the effect of PCS on village attitudes towards whether the systems would be functioning in five years’ time. This may reflect the broad confidence communities had in their systems; about 75 percent of respondents thought their systems would still be functioning in five years’ time. over a ten-year horizon, however, those villages where water committees or operators were receiving PCS were more likely to be confident that their system would keep running.

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indeed, any form of PcS may encourage such a misperception, which could perhaps be modified by some type of education about the 16

exact nature of support available.

This relationship between PCS and optimism about sustainability can perhaps be attributed to community realizations that a wider support network for the water system exists, going beyond the system operator and water committee. This realization is valuable, but it could have perverse financial implications if households think that this wider support network will step in and make any major repairs or expansions to the system when necessary.16