Good governance and rural water supplies: The Case of Village Water Committees at St. Michaels in Lesotho

Abstract

The Kingdom of Lesotho has for many years, experimented with the use of Village Water Committees (VWC) to promote Community-based good governance, democratisation and community participation in rural water supply management. This paper presents and discusses the experiences of the case study of the Village Water Committees at St. Michaels at Roma in Maseru, Lesotho, to highlight some prospects and challenges of community-based rural water supply management for good governance and sustainability. The paper identifies some of the challenges as indefinite office tenure, lack of remuneration to office members, lack of adequate training to VWC members, conflict by multiple users and uses in the communities and the lack of statutory power of the bye-laws that the VWC is expected to use in the water management.