Stand-Alone Unit or Mainstreamed Responsibility: How Can Water Utilities Serve Low-Income Communities, 2015. Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
Urban utilities throughout the developing world face the challenge of extending services to low-income communities (LICs). This paper draws on current best practice to explore a question that is core to addressing this challenge: how can utilities effectively structure their organisation to extend services to LICs?
Our review of ten utilities reveals three candidate approaches:
- Dedicated, stand-alone LIC unit with operational function;
- Dedicated, stand-alone LIC unit with advisory function;
- ‘Mainstreaming’ approach in which responsibilities for serving LICs are distributed throughout the utility’s operational units.
