Stakeholders’ View of Sustainability of Public Water Supply Schemes in a Rural Area: The Case of Muyuka Subdivision, Cameroon

Background and Aim: It is certain that without readily available water in sufficient quantity, and free of pathogens, man's progress is tremendously hindered. In Muyuka, Cameroon, though there exist public taps littered “here and there”, the population most often find themselves fetching water from nearby streams raising to surface the question of sustainability of the available water systems which was the aim of this study.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional, analytic study targeting household heads and water committee members in the rural communities of Muyuka. Three communities were randomly selected and from each, five quarters were randomly selected. In the quarters, convenience sampling technique was used for the household heads while snowball sampling technique was used to get the water committee members. An interviewer administered questionnaire was used and data analyzed using R.

Results: A total of 371 persons participated in the study. The average number of years lived in the community was 22.08 (SD=10.61) and ranged from 10 to 66. Only 13.00% of the participant didn’t see the water system as challenging while 81.5% finds it to be severely problematic. Utilization of water averaged far less than the 50L/person/day and the situation worsened as the household size increased. Close to half (49.6%) of participants did not participate at any stage in the development of the water system. According to the participants, water systems breaks down averagely 3 times in a year and last for about 67 days before being repaired. Water committee members reported difficulties in accessing spare parts and inadequacy in their training.

Conclusion: Frequent breakdown of the water schemes compounded by the unavailability of spare parts and hence delays in repairs, and in expansion, user dissatisfaction and unwillingness to pay their bills; inadequacy in training of water committee members, has resulted in poor sustainability of the water system.