Improving water services: utility-small water enterprise partnerships

THIS PAPER IS based on current WEDC research on small water enterprises (SWEs), whose purpose is to identify and test constraints, opportunities and strategies for enabling small water-providing enterprises to deliver an acceptable water service to poor urban consumers. The paper provides some background and brief information on utilities and SWEs, and outlines typical constraints faced by SWEs in their operations. The paper then looks at the rationale for developing viable mechanisms through which water utilities could form mutually beneficial partnerships with SWEs for the benefit of customers, and explores potential opportunities and interventions that can enable SWEs to provide affordable good quality water services to customers while at the same time providing benefit to the water utilities. The aim of the proposed Utility-SWE partnerships is to improve water services to customers in informal urban settlements of developing countries, while meeting the objectives of water utilities and SWEs.