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CHAPTER 3: NEWTOWN (EDENDALE UNIT RR)
3.6 Business Partners for Development (BPD)
BPD is a World Bank initiative that addresses the growing need for partnerships and alliances among business,civil society and government to support development efforts that
9The developm entnow has 1 365 sitesand not 1 377.
are aimed at improving the standard of living of communities throughout the world. The idea of this programme, which was initiated in 1998, is to bring together the diverse resources, expertise and perspectives of three distinct sectors namely, the business sector, the public sector and civil society,in particular Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
The general objective of the programmeis to search for new ways or methods of providing services and sustainable development, in particular, to deprived urban and peri-urban communities (BPD 2001b).
The programme consists of four clusters areas namely:
• Education and youth development
• Natural resources
• Road safety
• Water and sanitation
A number of projects, spread throughout the world, have been developed for each cluster area,with the aim of demonstrating the partnership approach and sharing the lessons learnt from one project, to another.
3.6.1 Water and sanitation cluster
This was an obvious choice by the World Bank because water supply and sanitation play such an important role in the health of a population and thus the ability of the people to become upwardly mobile. Also, the World Bank felt that "the complexities and the sensitivitiesof this sector make it appropriatefor the type of association proposed in the BPD Programme" (BPD 2000a:2). The Water and Sanitation cluster presently has eight projects running in places such as Colombia,Haiti,Indonesia, Argentina, Bolivia, Senegal and South Africa (BPD 2001b). These projects range from major developments to experimental pilot programmes such as the KwaZulu-Natal BPD project.
3.6.2 The KwaZulu-Natal pilot project
As previously described, one of the many challenges facing South Africa is the extension of services previously supplied by municipalities to predominantly white areas, to former townships, semi-urban and rural areas, all of which are now incorporated into municipalities, thus placing a huge financial and human resource strain on these local authorities. The high level of technical and engineering skills available in this country,
make this an accomplishable task. As a result,Vivendi Water (an experienced waste and water service provider in France and world-wide), Mvula Trust (a leading NGO whose mission is to improve water and services for the poor) and Umgeni Water (the regional bulk water supplier) together proposed that a tri-sector water and sanitation pilot project be developed in Edendale.
The Pietermaritzburg Executive Committee agreed to the project in May 1998 and, after further discussions, it was agreed to extend the project to include a similar project in Durban (Inanda-Ntuzuma). Together these two projects are known as the KwaZulu-Natal BPD Project (BPD 200lb).The tri-sector partnership is built on co-operation between the Ethekweni municipality, the Msunduzi municipality,Umgeni Water, Mvula Trust, Vivendi Water and the Water Research Commission.
Two areas in Inanda (Amatikwe and Bhambayi), one in Ntuzuma (Ntuzuma Extension G), and three areas in Edendale (Ashdown, Imbali and Newtown) were identified as being suitable for the BPD Programme.
3.6.3 The Newtown project
The primary aim of the BPD project in Newtown was to investigate and improve health and hygiene conditions and practices in the community (BPD 2000a). The problem in the settlement was that grey-water tended to stagnate in areas adjacent to the tank and the house itself. As documented by the BPD in their February 2000 Report (2000a), the problems included:
• Rising damp into block walls.
• Nutrient rich water open to air and light.
• Pollution of natural waterways.
• Salinisation of topsoil due to soaps.
• Associated human and environmental health risks.
3.6.4 Failure of the low pressure ground tank water supply system
However, the most concerning issue was that the trickle feed water tank system'", which included the installation of a 200-litre water tank on a concrete plinth outside each house in the settlement, was not successful. The positioning of the tank resulted in a number of perceived and actual water supply problems. The outcome of this unhappiness was that there was resistance from the community to the system and ultimately a rejection of the system. An investigation undertaken for BPD identified the following problems:
• The inlet pipe to the tanks had been poorly installed resulting in broken or leaking pipes.
• Ball and valve mechanisms in the tank were damaged or completely destroyed.
• Tank taps had been broken off from the tank.
• The trickle feed box apertures were tampered with to increase water flow.
• Many of the tanks had been stolen, were missing or were merely being used for other purposes (see Figure 7 below).
• Water was being lost due to damages to the system and illegal standpipes.Many house owners had disconnected and bypassed the trickle feed system and had installed garden taps with full pressure, compromising the pressure elsewhere in the settlement.
• There was evidence of poor grey-water drainage, which would very easily lead to health problems.
• There was evidence of rising damp and moisture around the tanks and the adjoining house walls.
• Tanks were poorly positioned. The tanks were exposed to the sun (no shelter),which not only damaged the tanks (tanks became brittle), but also heated the water (unpalatable).
• There was a concern amongst community members that the tanks, because of their poor positioning, posed a security risk as poison could easily be added to the water.
IOWith this system,water is gravity fed to speciallymanufactured yard tanks.The tank inlet has a flow regulator (trickle feed), whichis sized to give a predetermined volume (approximately 200 litres per day) to each household.
Figure7: Water tank used for other purposes. An observation made during site visits undertaken in April 2003 was that few, if any, water tanks were being properly used.