Water Quality, Reliability and Payment for Services: Household Perspectives I - Context and Water Quality

Introduction

Information on water quality and water reliability may be obtained from two different sources:

• Data published by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), derived from water service authority reporting and model-based updating of census information
• Data derived from the General Household Survey (GHS), which interviews households once a year.

DWS data are aggregated by water service authority, whereas the unit of observation in the GHS is the household.

The purpose of this and the following briefs is to set out what can be learnt about household perceptions of water services, water quality, interruptions from the 2018 GHS.

The context: distribution of sources of drinking water

Table 1 sets out the estimates of the numbers of households by source of drinking water and whether the water is supplied by the municipality or not. 47% of all households have piped water in their dwellings, 29% have piped water in their yards, 12% get their water from a communal tap and 12% get their water from an assortment of other sources. 85% of all households are supplied by municipalities and, among the households who are so supplied, 53% have piped water in their dwellings, 31% have piped water in their yards and 13% get their water from a communal tap.

Households have a water supply meeting Reconstruction and Development (RDP) standards if they have piped water in their dwellings or in their yards or they get their water from a communal tap not more than 200 metres away from their dwellings. Table 2 sets out the proportions of households meeting the RDP standard by geographical type. 82% of all households have a water supply meeting RDP standards. Among households who have their water supplied by the municipalities, 92% meet RDP standards. Among households who do not have their water supplied by municipalities, 28% meet RDP standards. In urban areas, nearly all households have water supplied by municipalities. In traditional areas, just over 60% of households receive their water from municipalities, and on the farms just under 30%. In both traditional areas and farms, three quarters of households supplied by municipalities meet the RDP standards. But whereas 42% of households not receiving water from municipalities in urban areas nonetheless meet the RDP standards, and 49% on farms, only 18% of households in the same position in traditional areas are RDP compliant.

Table 1 - Drinking water by source

Table 2 - Percentages of households with water supply meeting RDP standards

The GHS estimates that 359 445 households once used piped or tap water but no longer do so because the supply system has broken down. Of these households, 9% lived in urban areas, 7% on farms and 83% in traditional areas.

Of those who do not have water supplied to their dwelling or yard, 56% walk less than 200 metres to fetch water. 28% travel between 200 and 500 metres, 11% between 500 metres and a kilometer and 5% more than a kilometer.

Water quality

One can expect differences in estimates of water quality from the two sources. DWS data, where available, are based on scientific tests of water quality and are capable of detecting problems that households are unlikely to be aware of. Households base their assessment of water quality mainly on the basis of three characteristics: whether the water is clear or not, whether the water tastes good or not, and whether the water is free from odour or not. The 2018 GHS contains information on all three of these characteristics, and also asks households whether they regard their drinking water as safe.

Table 3 sets out the distribution of households by whether their water supply is regarded as safe as supplied, and whether the water is defective, i.e. is either not clear, or bad tasting, or odorous.

Table 3 - Whether water is safe to drink

93% of households regard their water as safe. 90% of households report that their water is not defective. However, the relationship between safety and defectiveness is by no means perfect. 38% of households reporting their water is defective nonetheless regard it as safe and 0.7% of households with water that is not defective regard it as unsafe.

It is possible to probe the determinants of whether households regard their water as safe by using a form of regression analysis[1]. Possible determinants include whether the water is unclear, bad tasting or odorous, the source of water used for drinking, whether or not the water is supplied by the municipality, geographical type and province. The regression results are reported in the Appendix. Significant impacts on the perception of safety include:

• Whether the water is unclear, bad tasting or odorous
• Whether the water comes from a borehole on site or a rain water tank on site. If it does, it is regarded as safer than piped water in the dwelling
• Whether the water comes from a stream or river, a well or a spring. If it does, it is regarded as less safe than piped water in dwelling
• Whether the water is supplied by the municipality or not. If it is not, it is regarded as less safe.
• Geographical type has no impact
• The province in which the household is located. Compared with the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Kwazulu-Natal, North West, Gauteng, and Limpopo have a higher propensity to regard their water as safe. This indicates that the perception of safety is variable across provinces, other factors being equal.

Households may attempt to deal with water they regard as unsatisfactory by treating it, for instance by filtering or boiling it, or adding chemicals such as chlorine. Table 4 sets out whether households treat their water or not.

Table 4 - Water treatment

The relationship between water treatment and water quality is complex. On the one hand, there are cautious households who always or sometimes treat their water, even though they regard their water as safe and it is not defective. Of greater concern are the just over a million households who regard their water as unsafe or receive defective water, but which never treat their water. 48% of households in urban areas with unsafe or defective water never treat their water, compared with 74% in traditional areas and 67% on farms, suggesting that some households not treating may lack the means for doing so.

Conclusions

Just over four out of five households report having a water supply meeting RDP standards in so far as they apply to the source of drinking water. There remains considerable variance across geographical types and whether or not water is municipally supplied. On the one hand 96% of households in urban areas supplied by municipalities meet RDP standards. This drops to 18% in traditional areas without a municipal supply.

Perceptions of the safety of water are determined not only by whether water is defective or not, but also by the source of water, whether or not the water is supplied by a municipality, and province of residence. The relationship between home treatment, on the one hand, and perceptions of safeness and defectiveness of water supplied is complex, with cautious households treating drinking water even though they regard it as safe and the water is not defective, and households who do not treat their water, even though they regard it as unsafe or the water is defective.

To complete the picture, interruptions in water supply need to be considered, and this will be done in the next brief.

Charles Simkins
Head of Research
charles@hsf.org.za

Appendix – Results of probit analysis of the determinants of perception of water safety

[1]In technical terms, a backwards stepwise probit analysis is employed, with retained variables significantly different from zero at the 5% level.