An overview of the life-cycle costs approach to WASH service sustainability in Ghana.
Published on: 23/04/2012
Background
A Ghanaian adage goes like “you never finish building a house”. This adage is true to the extent that even after constructing a house, ‘finishing’ and moving in, there will always be the need to carry out minor maintenance activities on the structure from-time-to-time, including repainting, repairing and replacing broken-down parts among others. If this is not done over time, the building structure is likely to become weak, uninhabitable and eventually collapse.
The above analogy can be likened to the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. It has always been the case that anytime a need for a WASH service is identified what first comes to mind is how to get the facility in place to provide the service. There is no thought or comprehensive plan to ensure that services are sustainable over the life span of the facility.
This situation could, most probably be attributed to the fact that cost consideration is made only towards the procurement of the facility (capital cost) with very little for post construction support activities including expenditure on minor repairs, labour, fuel, chemicals, materials (Operational and minor maintenance expenditure (OpEx), the cost of borrowing or otherwise acquiring the resources to provide the assets needed for a service (Cost of capital (CoC), expenditure on asset renewal, replacement and rehabilitation costs which constitute some major repairs (Capital maintenance expenditure), expenditure on staff capacity building and resource provision (Expenditure on Direct Support (ExpDS), the interest payments on debt and dividend to equity providers expenditure on government macro-level planning and policy-making (Expenditure on Indirect Support (ExpIDS).
If these different cost components are duly acknowledged and taken care of in a budget for the provision of the service then we say a life cycle costing approach has been adopted to ensure sustainability. The life cycle cost in budgeting for WASH services is to ensure adequate planning and budgeting for post construction activities to ensure that services are sustainable.
The Problem
In the Volta Region, there have been difficulties in ensuring that WASH facilities continue to deliver sustainable services to beneficiaries throughout their life-span. A report of a baseline study conducted by the Triple S Project, in partnership with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) and the Akatsi District Assembly in the Volta Region in five area councils, have shown that out of a total of249boreholes in the district, the greater majority are performing sub-optimally.
Two performance areas in the report in reference are functionality and reliability of facilities.
According to the report, only 19percent of boreholes were functional, 48 percent partially functional, 7 percent non-functional with 26 percent completely broken down. A borehole facility is said to be functional when it has passed both a stroke test and leakage test; partially functional if it has passed at least one test- either a stroke or a leakage test and non-functional if it has failed in both stroke and leakage test.
On reliability, 70 percent of the boreholes were reliable and 30 percent not reliable. A facility is said to be reliable if it works at least 95 percent of the time; that is having a down time of not more than18 days in a year.
Causes of the problem
This situation as illustrated above is partly be due to the non use of Life Cycle Cost Approach to budgeting and tariffs setting as the report found out. As a result there are logistical constraints and limited funds at the district level to carry out post construction monitoring and maintenance activities. This has prevented District Water and Sanitation Teams (DWST), especially in the Volta Region to visit water and sanitation facilities in their districts frequently as possible and offer support.
The intervention from WASHCost
To forestall some of these difficulties and their resultant negative impact on WASH service delivery, the WASHCost Project Ghana undertook a two-day training workshop on the Life Cycle Cost Approach to budgeting for WASH services for District Assembly staff in the Volta Region at Akatsi. It aims to equip participants with the requisite skills to be able to adequately plan and budget for post construction activities in their districts to ensure the sustainability of services. Participants were drawn from the Keta Municipal Assembly, Akatsi District, Ketu South District Assembly and staff from the CWSA the Volta Region.
The Expectations from Participants
Some expectations by participants included the hope of acquiring skills in effective budgeting for sustainability of WASH services in their districts, the enhancement of knowledge on how to sufficiently plan and budget for existing water facilities within their municipality to ensure full benefit of their WASH facilities, to be able to properly cost for WASH services using projected cost approach and to be exposed to and equipped with the skills and tools on how to cost water and sanitation facilities and maintain them for sustainability.
The way forward
At the end of workshop views were sought as to how they were going to use the new knowledge acquired to improve on their budgeting for WASH services in their districts.
Mr. Mensah Peter Dakpi is the Municipal Planning Officer for the Keta Municipal Assembly. He said the LCCA knowledge will help for proper budgeting to adequately take care of post construction activities. He said hitherto, most post construction activities were not planned and budgeted for and so were undertaken on an adhoc basis as and subjected to the availability of funds.
He said “This time round, we are going to impress upon the management of the District Assembly to set aside funds which will actually be tailored for this (post construction) activities so that the services that we render will be enhanced”.
Reuben Kornu, District Head-Water and Sanitation, Ketu South District Assembly, he said I have come to appreciate the fact that it is not just enough to provide the physical facility to solve a water or sanitation problem but ensuring that the service is sustained by regular maintenance, without which there will be a breakdown of the facility and the beneficiaries will slip back to their old situation.
He said “What will change with my budgeting from now is that I will be looking at the post construction maintenance activities of the facilities because that is what will enhance the long term sustainability of the facility so that we don’t concentrate only on the capital cost or expenditure”.
He believes more people from the district assemblies, especially the DCEs, finance officers and district directors be exposed to this new way of costing WASH services to understand the concept so as to support it.
Seth Kwame Damasah, Head-DWST, Akatsi District,said systems in his districts were maintained out of government sources, project interventions or by philanthropists. “From now what we will do is that we shall inculcate all the cost components and cost aspects in our budget so that once we know the activities (for post construction) we should be able to make provision for them so that in future we will not be found wanting”.
He believes that it is good to budget towards the post construction services even when they think there are no funds available to support them because there may come an unexpected intervention.
Oscar Philip Ahianyo is a Senior Extension Services Specialist with the CWSA in Volta Region. He said “if I compare what we used to budget for and what we have been exposed to at the workshop we were budgeting for only a few of the items but now we will incorporate all the costing components into our budget. New approaches, skills and attitudes for a systematic budgeting for sustainable WASH services”.
Conclusion
It is the believe of WASHCost that at the end of this series of training, the capacity of the people in charge of budgeting at the District Assemblies will be built to ensure sustainability of services. Even though participants have been optimistic about being able to properly budget for their activities, the difficulty will however, be with the release of funds, its adequacy and timeliness. This is because the district assemblies have several developmental and social projects that compete for the same available limited resources hence it may not be feasible that once an item is contained in a budget funding will be made available.
It is my fervent hope that the knowledge so acquired at these workshops will be used in strategic planning and budgeting and the District Assemblies will be in the position to provide the needed funding to ensure that WASH facilities continue to deliver sustainable services to the intended recipients.
Victor Narteh Otum
DCO-WASHCost Project Ghana
April 23, 2012
