The effectiveness of municipal water service delivery in Hluvukani Community in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga

Abstract

This study reflects on the effectiveness of municipal water service delivery in Hluvukani community in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga. Since the study wanted to have an in-depth understanding of the strategies/methods that the municipality use to deliver water services effectively in Hluvukani, both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches were used. It is within these methodologies that a case study was adopted to seek to deepen the strategies used by government and municipal officials to address the challenges of water experienced by villagers in Hluvukani. Three methods of data collection were used, namely: interviewing, non- participant observation and documents. Hluvukani village was selected as a site for the study by means of purposive sampling. The participants interviewed included the municipal manager, the municipal officials, Hluvukani villagers and officials from the Department of Water Affairs. The documents consulted included the municipal IDP and the 2015/2016 Municipal Budget. This study found that villagers have difficulties in accessing water at Hluvukani and the water service delivery was not effective even though the municipal manager claimed otherwise. This was manifested by the strategies that were used to delivery water such as using delivery trucks to supply water to Hluvukani villages every two weeks. This, the researcher found ineffective as people had to live without water delivery for a period up to four weeks.