ISSN 2329-9843
International Journal of Educational Research and Reviews ISSN 2329-9843 Vol. 4 (4), pp. 694-704, April, 2016. © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research Paper
Borehole provision and sustainability to guarantee potable water availability for progressive poverty reduction in Ghana
Kofi Dramani Kingston
Department of Geography and Rural Development, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.
E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 30 March, 2016
Abstract
This study establishes the prime essence of providing measures for borehole sustainability immediately after borehole provision to guarantee potable water availability for progressive poverty reduction. The sample size was 1,200 household respondents from eighty communities provided with boreholes selected by simple random sampling technique. Primary data were collected from the Atebubu and Afram Plains Districts in Ghana through the use of quantitative and qualitative research instruments. The study’s results show that 90.8% of survey respondents indicated that their community boreholes were “currently working”, as at the time of the survey. Also, 85.0% of the respondents indicated that their communities owned the boreholes, 99.5% indicated willingness on the part of community members to sustain boreholes, while 86.4% indicated that their households contribute funds as levies for borehole maintenance. Ensuring effective borehole sustainability practices is therefore quintessential to poverty reduction efforts. When boreholes become dysfunctional, poverty reduction processes become jeopardized and enter a reversal mode which if not resolved early, gains in poverty reduction are lost.
Key words: Boreholes, handpump sustainability, poverty reduction, WATSAN committee, operation and maintenance, community level management.