Willingness of households in Wakiso District to pay more for improved water supply

Abstract

The study assessed the willingness of households in Wakiso District to pay more for improved water supply using a case study of Makindye Ssabagabo Municipality. Three specific objectives were used to guide the study and these include: 1) assessed households’ satisfaction with the existing water supply conditions; 2) determined household willingness to pay for improvements in piped water supply; and 3) determined factors that influence households’ willingness to connect and to pay for improved piped water supply services. A simple random technique was used to select a sample of 382 households and data was collected using primary instruments: – questionnaires, observations and face to face interviews. Descriptive statistics were used to examine satisfaction with the current water supply conditions. Logit and Tobit regression were used to analyse factors influencing household’s willing to pay for the improved piped water supply through STATA version 13. Five sources (water taps, water springs, and rainfall, borehole and open water bodies) were identified as the main sources of water and the main frequently used source was taps and water springs. The former was from facilities of the National Water and Sewerage Corporation and satisfaction with water supply was low with 41% of the households reporting satisfaction. The findings also reveal that 86% of the households were willing to pay more than the National Water and Sewerage Corporation set tariff of Uganda Shillings 58.8 Per twenty litres (Uganda Shillings 2940 per unit/1000 litres) of piped tap water (Value Added Tax inclusive) if piped water flow reliability is improved to 20 hours a day. It was found that willingness to connect to improved piped water supply was low among households with older household heads (p=0.009), with low level of education and with households that were more than 500 metres from a water source (p=0.030). Willingness to pay more for improvements in piped water supply however, increased among households with large family size (p=0.063) and households located between 100 metres and 500 metres (p=0.057 and 0.062) from drinking water source. In conclusion, the research shows that the people are willing to pay for improved piped water supply services. Thus, the Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Water and Environment; and National Water and Sewerage Cooperation need to improve piped water supply for the population.