Challenges Facing the Municipality Water and Sanitation Provision - Coursework Example

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This section explores the scholarly literature that address the issues related to the quality of service offered by the municipality in terms of provision of water and sanitation, factors affecting the provision as well as strategies tom put in place in order to improve the quality of services provided by the municipality.

2.2 Perceptions of Service Quality

The perceptions connected to the quantity and quality of service provided by many national governments across the globe have often been negative, which is on the rise and is especially more pronounced in the municipalities. This has attracted several studies that examine the service delivery by the municipalities. However, these studies have made no attempt to investigate if this perceptions are valid or not. Quite often, the researchers are more interested in the justification of perceptions rather than in refuting them. This could be as a result of past experiences and perceptions or at times, prejudices, biases or subjectivity.

Perceptions are often a function of a number of things such as past experiences and biases. And this explains why people perceive things differently. The origin of perceptions in people also differs and many at times, they are informed by a person’s past experiences relating to the subject under investigation as well as a person’s expectations, beliefs, prejudices. The perceptions, when it comes to municipalities, are informed by the people’s prior experiences particularly with the previous municipal administration which are always riddled with corruption. Consequently, this perceptions are often premised on actual facts but sometimes informed by fallacy or wrong information. This is a view held by McLeod (2007) who argued that some perceptions are not justified and that it is quite untenable that a whole population or its subset can have or display uniform characteristics. It is also wrong to conclude that all the municipalities throughout the world are both inefficient and corrupt. Poch (2013) supports this argument by stating that although perception is very critical, they are sometimes not real owing to its subjectivity as is captured by Quintana’s (2006) definition that perception is a way through which a person sees the world in the lens of his/her experiences.

Subjective and bias the views of people might be, it is critical that their involvement is engaged. This is emphasized by Freemantle (2007) who argued that engaging the people through soliciting their views and ideas about running an institution or organization is crucial. It thus behoves every government or municipality to take public participation seriously in the running of the government or municipal’s affairs and in decision making. Freemantle (2007) further argues that there is a lot a municipal or a government can gain from public participation than it will lose. This is because the people at the grassroots are the ones who are affected by the decisions related to service delivery and thus their views are critical in the proper and equitable distribution of resources as well as preparation and implementation of budgetary allocations.

In this regard, the municipal administrators should regularly hold meetings with the members of the public so that they get informed on their needs, priorities and expectations so that they plan well and offer services effectively. It is therefore evident that feedback from the public is important to the municipal administrators as it will inform their priorities, budget preparation and implementation and policy formulation that will go a long way into reducing the challenges connected to poor administration such as frequent protests and strikes. It will also help in correcting misconceptions that people may have about the municipality or the organization because some perceptions are born out of wrong information or lack of it. In this connection, the municipality should endeavour to engage the communities through giving them an opportunity to participate in decision making processes so as to bridge the gap between the municipal administration and the people as well as fostering understanding between them.

This participatory approach is most beneficial where there had been negative perceptions about the administration emanating from past incompetent administration when the new competent one takes over and had to right or improve things but had to, first, remove these past perceptions. Erasing such perceptions from the minds of the people is not an easy task as has been discovered by several psychologists since people generally tend to take longer to let go of such perceptions hewed by years of experience. This is support enough for those believers who argue that though some perceptions are justified for certain dispensation or administration, but may not necessarily be true for another.

Therefore, correcting wrong perceptions harboured by communities should be a key concern of any new administration or organization. This is because, many at times, people are dissatisfied with the service delivery by the organizations mandated to do so. Such arguments are given credence by Campbell’s (2009) argument that in a recent research conducted they conducted, 2/3 of the respondents revealed that they are dissatisfied with the services provided by their municipalities. The research found that there was a general belief among the people that the municipalities were performing poorly and inefficiently in the provision of water, sanitation and refuse removal and thus fell short of their expectations. In Campbell’s (2009) survey, 62% of the respondents express disappointment at the alarming deterioration of the quality of the environment in general. This study’s findings were backed by Cockcroft et al’s (2002) study that was conducted in Acapulco Mexico City that arrived at similar findings that the municipal authorities were providing poor services to the public. But for the Acapulco Mexico City, there challenges were aggravated by the influx of people from the rural areas who are putting stress on the available resources such as water and sewerage systems.

2.3 Factors Affecting Service Delivery

2.3.1 Financial Constraints

The 2013 infrastructure news on service delivery showed that in 2008, there was a report handed to the then National Department of Provincial and Local Government by the Afrikaans Handels Instituut (AHI) that raise alarm on the wanting services delivery in several municipalities of South Africa. The report also highlighted challenges of service delivery such as insufficient financial resources in the municipalities that has crippled the smaller municipalities such as uMzimkhulu in their quest to provide better service delivery and basic amenities. The cause of this municipal financial constraint is the overdependence on funding from the national government which is also strained by several competing needs. This is a perfect replica of what is facing several countries today in their effort to serve their people better (Kanyane, 2007).

The overdependence on the national government to fund the municipal affairs should be stopped and the municipalities should find ways of sourcing for funds. The national government should not be entirely blamed for the scarcity of funds in the municipalities since the municipalities seem to be inefficient in collecting taxes especially from income earners and businesses who are the major beneficiaries of county services and amenities. The growing population of jobless people such as is evident in the rural municipalities like Harry Gwala District Municipality is worsening the financial challenge in those municipalities.

The decreasing affordability of services may be a threat to levels of payment. The problem of poverty is the main challenge experienced by the municipality. Several households controlled by smaller municipalities are poor apart from a small percentage of members of household who have been employed and are earning a living. This has reduced the ability of households to make payment of municipal services which affects delivery service since it undermine the ability of municipality to re-invest the revenue into service delivery rollouts, this is according to Campbell, 2009. Since municipality’s main source of revenue is from the residents, their failure to pay will seriously affect the ability of municipality to give service delivery in time and at the right level of quantity and quality. The reason behind this is that the majority of people in the municipalities are poor and unemployed thus cannot afford to pay for the services of the municipal. Inadequate financial resources is the major factor undermining the ability of municipalities to provide services in the quantity and quality that meets the expectation of the people. Consequently, a new model to enable the residents to make payment is needed. Maintenance of construction equipment and service vehicles have been abandoned because of financial constraints which has led to breaking down of both water treatment and sewerage plants which is seen in poor delivery of service.

There is a serious capital finance shortage for funding of delivery of service of municipal infrastructure. The approximation of a total theoretical shortfall in providing funds for local service delivery of infrastructure that is the difference between available resources and required investments of R178 billion over a 10- year period exist which stretches from the year 2014 to 2015 (The news of infrastructure,2011). The exact funding capital gap is greater since borrowing of municipal is reserved and charges of developer goes unrecovered. Out of the R59.5 billion that was to be directly funded by the municipalities themselves ( not including service provider funding and grants), the one that was budgeted for in the financial year 2013/14 to represent a real financing gap of R 22.5% or 38% was only R37.2 billion. This serves to strengthen service delivery challenges as a result of insufficient financial resources, this is according to infrastructure news, 2011.

2.3.2 Poor Forecasting Techniques

Failure by some municipalities to plan, through population growth forecast, the needs of the residents has hampered their service delivery. Several municipalities fail to forecast the effect of rural-urban migration and the subsequent strain on resources hence reducing them to being reactive instead of being proactive. And as a result, their ability to provide the public with the needed services is challenged (Savage, 2011). This is a view that is supported by Wild, Chambers, King and Harries (2012) in their argument that the improved service delivery witness in several municipalities and the developing countries at large may be lost to the public due to such reasons as wanting governance and lack of political goodwill. These are indeed major factors that have hindered the effective delivery of services by the municipalities. This is further attested by Wild et al (2012) who identified five common political constraints and incentive-related problems that have hampered the local authorities, ability to perform. These include policy incoherence, political market imperfections, collective action challenges, lack of effective performance and moral hazard.