South Africa has seen a number of evaluation and monitoring initiatives in the last five years. There is a tendency, however, to embark on or promote ambitious monitoring programmes, with scores of indicators, and this is simply not sustainable in practice (which is evident from the fact that at present very little monitoring happening). It is better to start with something simple, and to build up from there.
The three most important indicators of a water supply scheme’s health are:
- water quality [where the basic questions are: does it look good? does it taste good? does it smell good? and is it disinfected? / is the source protection in order?]
- reliability [measured as working tap days as a percentage of the maximum possible]; and
- source sustainability [where this is an indicator showing either the level in the dam, the flow in the spring or the level in the borehole, relative to some minimum allowable level].
This paper was written for WISA.